Greenwor(l)ds: Ecocritical Readings of Canadian Women's PoetryRelke (women's and gender studies, U. of Saskatchewan) divides her book into what she calls three chronological "moments in feminist ecocritical consciousness": poetic, ecological, and ecocritical. Essays included under poetic consciousness are preoccupied with woman's search for subjectivity in a literary universe that can't accommodate women poets of nature, examining, for example, Atwood's Journals of Susanna Moodie. To ecological consciousness, Relke assigns essays examining how Dorothy Livesay, Isabella Valancy Crawford and Daphne Marlatt understand the metaphor, woman = nature, and how they use it to address green concerns. Lastly, essays under ecocritical consciousness focus on the critical act itself and on the masculine construction of Canadian literary history. The book's constant theme, writes Relke, "concerns the struggle by women poets to make the best of a bad idea--namely, patriarchy." Canadian card order number: C99-910815-8. Distribute by Raincoast Distribution Services. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. |
Contents
PREFACE | 7 |
A Literary History of Nature | 11 |
1 POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS | 39 |
2 ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS | 139 |
3 ECOCRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS | 203 |
Does Nature Matter? | 315 |
ENDNOTES | 325 |
| 339 | |
| 355 | |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | 363 |
Common terms and phrases
aboriginal alienation Angus Atwood's binary body Canada Canadian poetry centre Cheating at Solitaire civilization Coast Dwellers conflict consciousness context conventions Crawford creative critical critique culture and nature culture's Davey death discourse Dumont's E.J. Pratt early earth ecocritical ecocriticism ecological epistemology essay experience female feminine feminism feminist Frye's garden gender Green Indian halfbreed human identity indigenous Innis Innis's intersubjective Isabella Valancy Crawford Kan-il-lak landscape language lives Livesay Livesay's Malcolm's Katie Marilyn Dumont Marjorie Pickthall Marlatt Marvell's masculine metaphor modernist Moodie's Mother Nature myth Native nonhuman nature opposition orality P.K. Page Page's paradox patriarchal Persephone persona Phyllis Webb Pickthall's poem poet poet's poetic postmodernism postmodernist reading realm relationship Romantic sexual Skinner Songs space Steveston story suggests Susanna Moodie symbol theory tion transcendence transformation tree ture verse Victorian vision voice Webb Webb's Western woman women poets women writers words writing