Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Prologue

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 1-16

3. Energy, Form, and the Novel

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 17-35

4. The Physics of Life: Darwin, Thomson Joule, Boltzmann

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 37-67

5. Experimental Reading

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 69-82

6. Austen’s Emergent Energies: Mansfield Park

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 83-103

7. Jane Eyre: From Heroic Energies to Sympathetic Ecologies

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 105-135

8. Fictions of Closure and Toxic Obfuscation in Great Expectations

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 137-162

9. Narrative Energies & The War of the Worlds

   • Barri J. Gold

   Pages 163-192

10. Back Matter

    Pages 193-215

    PDF

Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Novel Ecologies draws on energy concepts to revisit some of our favorite books—Mansfield Park, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The War of the Worlds—and the ways these shape our sense of ourselves as ecological beings. Barri J. Gold regards the laws of thermodynamics not solely as a set of physical principles, but also as a cultural and conceptual form that we can use to reimagine our historically vexed relationship to the natural world. Beginning with an examination of the parallel inceptions of energy and ecology in the mid-nineteenth century, this book considers the question of how we may better read and interpret our world, developing a recipe for experimental reading and insisting upon the importance of literary studies in a world driving to ecological catastrophe. 

 

• energy humanities
• ecology
• Victorian novels
• environmental humanities
• literature and science
• climate change
• Literature and the Environment
• Literature, Science and Medicine Studies

“This fascinating study shows how a thermodynamic understanding of energy is essential to ecological thinking, and how nineteenth-century fiction helps enable that understanding by offering a vehicle for thinking about ecology in terms of energy, and energy in terms of form.” (Jesse Oak Taylor, Associate Professor of English, University of Washington, USA, and author of The Sky of Our Manufacture: The London Fog in British Fiction from Dickens to Woolf (2016))

“This book brilliantly reveals how science and the humanities have been shaped by the tendency to understand systems as closed, which, in turn, has limited ecological thinking. Gold uses concepts from energy science to develop a remarkable and original ecological reading practice. Modeling an ecological thinking that promotes openness and entanglement, Gold suggests that the concept of energy can provide forms for alternative ways of thinking the world. The elegant readings of this booknot only offer fresh ways to approach nineteenth-century novels but also persuasively demonstrate that the humanities and Victorian studies in particular are vital for confronting contemporary problems like climate change and anti-ecological thinking.” (Sarah C. Alexander, Associate Professor of English, The University of Vermont, USA)

“Barri Gold's eminently readable new book builds on her previous work in bridging the sciences and humanities. The first half of the book provides scientific, historical, and theoretical contexts that underpin the ‘ecologically-informed readings’ of familiar nineteenth-century novels in the second half. Gold's enviable skill is in presenting complex ideas so that they are easily understood. I've taught excerpts from her chapters on Jane Eyre and Great Expectations in undergraduate courses: they work well as stand-alone arguments, while advanced students will appreciate the attention to historical and theoretical contexts in thefirst half.” (Jennifer Camden, Associate Chair and Professor, English, University of Indianapolis, USA)

• Muhlenberg College, Allentown, USA

  Barri J. Gold

Barri J. Gold is Professor and Chair of English at Muhlenberg College, USA, and author of ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science (2010). 

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