Nonhuman in American Literary Naturalism

The Nonhuman in American Literary Naturalism offers a new perspective on American literary naturalism that considers those under-researched aspects of the genre that can be gathered under the term the Nonhuman. The contributors, an international team of scholars, have turned their attention to that which becomes visible when the human subject is skirted, or perhaps, temporarily at least, moved off-center: in other words, the representation of nonhuman animals and other vital or inert species, things, entities, cityscapes and seascapes, that also appear and play an important part in American literary naturalism. Informed by animal studies, ecocriticism, posthumanism, new materialism, and other recent theoretical and philosophical perspectives, the essays in this collection discuss early naturalist texts by Norris, Crane, Dreiser, London, Wharton and Cather, as well as more recent followers in the tradition of American literary naturalism: Hemingway, Agee & Evans, Petry, Hamilton, Dick, Vonnegut, Tepper, and DeLillo. The collection responds to a need to expand and refine the connections among nonhuman studies and texts associated with American literary naturalism and to productively expand the scholarly discourse surrounding this vital movement in American literary history.

In this volume, scholars from Italy, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the U.S.A. investigate works of American literary naturalism through the intersection of literature, culture, and the physical environment. By analyzing the Nonhuman elements surrounding human subjects in classic and contemporary naturalist writers, the contributors create fresh insights into the links between theory and criticism and the global ecological crisis., The Nonhuman in American Literary Naturalism is an illuminating and provocative collection that will stimulate readers to expand their humancentric perspectives to understand the role of the nonhuman—animals, but also entities, processes, and agricultural and urban spaces—in literary naturalism and also its heir, science fiction., This book makes a substantial contribution to ecocritical and animal studies scholarship. Engaging with (post)humanism, literary aesthetics, and cultural theory, the collection offers fascinating analyses of relationships between humans and Nature—wild and cultivated, constructed, imagined, represented, and speculative. These fresh, original readings demonstrate, more than ever, the continued relevance of American literary naturalism as a field for expanding conversations about humans’ interaction with the environment, human agency, ethics, and aesthetics.

Karin Molander Danielsson is senior lecturer in English at Mälardalen University, Sweden. Kenneth K. Brandt is professor of English at the Savannah College of Art and Design.