Climate change in literature and literary studies: From cli‐fi, climate change theater and ecopoetry to ecocriticism and climate change criticism

Abstract

In the last 5 years, climate change has emerged as a dominant theme in literature and, correspondingly, in literary studies. Its popularity in fiction has given rise to the term cli‐fi, or climate change fiction, and speculation that this constitutes a distinctive literary genre. In theater, the appearance of several big‐name productions from 2009 to 2011 has inspired an increase in climate change plays. There has been a growing trend, too, of climate change poetry, thanks to the rise of ecopoetry (poetry that exhibits ecological awareness and engages with the world's current state of environmental degradation) and the launch of some key climate change poetry initiatives in the media. This prevalence of climate change literature has brought about a greater engagement with climate change in literary studies, notably the environmentally oriented branch of literary studies called ecocriticism. The increasing number of ecocritical analyses of climate change literature, particularly novels, is helping to shape a canon of climate change fiction. In a separate development, there has been greater interest in the phenomenon of climate change in literary or critical theory (the branch of literary studies concerned with literary concepts and philosophies rather than with literary texts). This development—centered on the study of climate change as a philosophical or existentialist problem—is sometimes termed climate change criticism or critical climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:266–282. doi: 10.1002/wcc.385 This article is categorized under: Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts

Narratives in climate change discourse

“…Our focus will be on nonfictional texts, but we observe similar approaches to the complex phenomenon of climate change being undertaken in literature and literary criticism where ‘the complexity of climate change as both scientific and cultural phenomenon demands a corresponding degree of complexity in fictional representation’ (Ref , p. 185). Johns‐Putra has investigated how the popularity of climate change in fiction has developed, contributing to new concepts such as cli‐fi (climate change fiction), climate change plays, novels, and poetry. The author emphasizes that this trend ‘has brought about a greater engagement with climate change in literary studies, notably the environmentally oriented branch of literary studies called ecocriticism’ (Ref , p. 266).…”

Environmental Themes in Popular Narratives

“…However, while Silent Spring arguably succeeded in its attempt to make invisible but potentially toxic substances imaginable and thereby eventually restricted, much contemporary environmental literature -just like film and electronic mediastruggle with the representational challenges of global environmental change. For example, many climate change novels are set far in the future, in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic setting, reflecting the prevalence of apocalypse as a major theme in environmental literature (Johns-Putra, 2016;Garrard, 2001). Meanwhile, cinema is similarly torn between spectacular and escapist tropes of industrial and nature spaces (to the extent to which they can be separated), and a tendency toward apocalyptic visions in films that use climate change as their main narrative strand is discernable.…”

Artful Sustainability: Queer-Convivialist Life-Art and the Artistic Turn in Sustainability Research

“…See the published reviews on the roles of visual, performing and community arts for environmental sustainability (Curtis et al [76], Blanc and Benish [9]), of ecological art for sustainability (Blanc and Ramos [4], Kagan [5], Weintraub [8]), of literature and cinema from the perspective of ecocriticism (see e.g. Zapf [77]), of music in relation to sustainability (Kagan and Kirchberg [78]), and reviews focusing more specifically on the roles of literature (Johns-Putra [79]) and the arts (Galafassi et al [80]) regarding the challenge of climate change. However, reviews of arts-based approaches as they are already being practiced by sustainability science researchers themselves, are rarer and emerged only more recently: see for example Heras and Tbara [81] on the uses of theatre-based participatory tools and methods in sustainabilty research projects.…”