Digressions in Deep Time: Ecocritical Approaches to Literature and the Arts
“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in particular: that deep time thinking and ecocriticism should be considered in conjunction, and that literature and the arts play a vital role in fostering a deep time awareness. Digressions in Deep Time is the first collection of essays which considers the multifarious representations of deep time across literature and the arts, assembling the work of a wide range of prominent scholars whose research frequently engages with temporality and ecocriticism. Featured contributions include work by the Pulitzer-prize winning author John McPhee, who popularised the term deep time in the late seventies, as well as chapters by Richard Irvine (author of An Anthropology of Deep Time), Benjamin Morgan (author of The Outward Mind) and Andrew Tate (author of Apocalyptic Fiction).

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Digressions in Deep Time: Ecocritical Approaches to Literature and the Arts
“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in particular: that deep time thinking and ecocriticism should be considered in conjunction, and that literature and the arts play a vital role in fostering a deep time awareness. Digressions in Deep Time is the first collection of essays which considers the multifarious representations of deep time across literature and the arts, assembling the work of a wide range of prominent scholars whose research frequently engages with temporality and ecocriticism. Featured contributions include work by the Pulitzer-prize winning author John McPhee, who popularised the term deep time in the late seventies, as well as chapters by Richard Irvine (author of An Anthropology of Deep Time), Benjamin Morgan (author of The Outward Mind) and Andrew Tate (author of Apocalyptic Fiction).

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Overview

“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in particular: that deep time thinking and ecocriticism should be considered in conjunction, and that literature and the arts play a vital role in fostering a deep time awareness. Digressions in Deep Time is the first collection of essays which considers the multifarious representations of deep time across literature and the arts, assembling the work of a wide range of prominent scholars whose research frequently engages with temporality and ecocriticism. Featured contributions include work by the Pulitzer-prize winning author John McPhee, who popularised the term deep time in the late seventies, as well as chapters by Richard Irvine (author of An Anthropology of Deep Time), Benjamin Morgan (author of The Outward Mind) and Andrew Tate (author of Apocalyptic Fiction).


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781666948417
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 06/18/2024
Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice
Pages: 334
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Declan Lloyd is lecturer and teaches across the English Literature, History and Sociology departments at Lancaster University.

Warren Mortimer is lecturer and poet, and holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: “To Brood Upon These Magnitudes”: A Digression on Deep Time in Literature and the Arts

Declan Lloyd

Part 1: Deep Time Poetics

Introductory Keynote: Deep Time Poetics

Andrew Tate

Chapter 1: The Horizons of Time: A Psycholinguistic Exploration of Spatiotemporal Metaphor in Recent Studies of Deep Time

Emil Tangham Hazelhurst

Chapter 2: Deep Time Trauma and Dantean Salvation in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Warren Mortimer

Chapter 3: “That Huge and Microscopic Career of Time”: William Carlos Williams’s Time-Lapse Poetics

Sean Keck

Chapter 4: Deep Time Necrodidactics: Poetics and Pedagogy of the Anthropocene

Roger Davis

Chapter 5: “Through the Vista of Geologic Time”: Literary Naturalism and the Ecological Sublime in the Writings of John Burroughs

Stephen Mercier

Part 2: Deep Time Narratives

Introductory Keynote: Pasts and Futures Present: Deep Time as Historical Narrative

Benjamin Morgan

Chapter 6: Deep Time in J. G. Ballard, or the “New Man” in the Mesh of Life

Joel Evans

Chapter 7: “Curlew or Curfew. You Choose”: Nature, Politics, and Deep Time in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Series

Flora Sagers

Chapter 8: The Call of the Void: Deep Time in the Early Science Fiction of H. G. Wells and Isaac Asimov

William Nolen

Chapter 9: Deep History and the Pursuit of Pure Origins in the Work of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy

Bernard Joy

Chapter 10: The Great “Enmuddening”: Deep Time in Classical Antiquity and the Example of Xenophanes

James Calvin Taylor

Part 3: Deep Time Aesthetics

Introductory Keynote: The Concealment of Deep Time

Richard Irvine

Chapter 11: Visualizing Deep Time: Environmental Narratives and Temporal Spatialization in EcoComix and Graphic Novels

Anthony Enns

Chapter 12: Art in One Million Years: Deep Time Aesthetics through Deleuze’s Material Notions of Time

Jakub Zdebik

Chapter 13: Architectures of Critical Mass: Expressions of Deep Time in Contemporary Design Practice

Maria Gloria Robalino

Chapter 14: Gamifying Deep Time: Archeogaming and the Anthropocene in the Horizon Franchise

Sarah Wagstaffe

A Q&A with John McPhee

Afterword: The Deep Time Sublime

Declan Lloyd and Warren Mortimer

Index

About the Editors, Keynotes and Contributors

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