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German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene pp 293–314Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Telling the Story of Climate Change: The German Novel in the Anthropocene

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Part of the book series: Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment ((LCE))

Abstract

This chapter begins by discussing the implications of the Anthropocene for literature and literary criticism, and the part which ecocritics can play in critically analyzing cultural representations of our relationship with nature and defining the contribution of imagination, art, and writing to the development of a posthuman identity. Reviewing studies of climate fiction in English and German to date, it traces the emergence of climate fiction as a twenty-first-century genre and presents a brief overview of 25 German novels published since 1993. Finally, it compares the solutions to problems of form and narrative strategy arrived at by Ilija Trojanow in his lament over our destructive impact on nature in Eistau (2011) with those in Cornelia Franz’s young adult novel, Ins Nordlicht blicken (2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Axel Goodbody

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  1. Axel Goodbody
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Caroline Schaumann

  2. Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA

    Heather I. Sullivan

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Goodbody, A. (2017). Telling the Story of Climate Change: The German Novel in the Anthropocene. In: Schaumann, C., Sullivan, H. (eds) German Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene. Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54222-9_16

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