Literature for a Changing Planet

In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner explores how world literature reflects and contributes to environmental exploitation and climate change over thousands of years. He argues that literature can be a powerful tool for changing attitudes towards the environment and offers insights into the ecological thinking behind the idea of world literature. Puchner calls for readers and writers to recognize the human species as responsible for global warming and to use storytelling to explore possible futures for the planet.

Format: Hardback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2022
Publisher: Princeton University Press

The power of stories in the fight against global warming has become increasingly recognized by scientists, policymakers, and activists. In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner explores four thousand years of world literature to uncover vital lessons about our relationship with the Earth and the potential for change.

Puchner demonstrates how world literature serves as both an archive of environmental exploitation and a product of a way of life that contributes to climate change. He highlights the long history of intensive agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction that underpins literature, from the clay of ancient tablets to the silicon of e-readers.

However, Puchner also reveals the powerful ways in which literature can shape attitudes toward the environment. He uncovers the ecological thinking that has informed the concept of world literature since the early nineteenth century and proposes a new way of reading in a warming world. He shows how literature can help us recognize our shared humanity and explore the possibilities for storytelling in a changing world.

If we are to avoid environmental catastrophe, it is essential that we learn to tell the story of humans as a species responsible for global warming. Literature for a Changing Planet offers important insights into the fundamental relationship between storytelling and the environment, serving as a clarion call for readers and writers who care about the fate of life on the planet.

Weight: 242g
Dimension: 118 x 192 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691213750