Over the past century, the Italian landscape has undergone
exceedingly rapid transformations, shifting from a mostly rural
environment to a decidedly modern world. This changing landscape is
endowed with a narrative agency that transforms how we understand
our surroundings. Situated at the juncture of Italian studies and
ecocriticism and following the recent "material turn" in the
environmental humanities, Elemental Narratives outlines an original
cultural and environmental map of the bel paese. Giving equal
weight to readings of fiction, nonfiction, works of visual art, and
physical sites, Enrico Cesaretti investigates the interconnected
stories emerging from both human creativity and the expressive
eloquence of "glocal" materials, such as sulfur, petroleum, marble,
steel, and asbestos, that have helped make and, simultaneously,
"un-make" today's Italy, affecting its socio-environmental health
in multiple ways. Embracing the idea of a decentralized agency that
is shared among human and nonhuman entities, Cesaretti suggests
that engaging with these entangled discursive and material texts is
a sound and revealing ecocritical practice that promises to
generate new knowledge and more participatory, affective responses
to environmental issues, both in Italy and elsewhere. Ultimately,
he argues that complementing quantitative, data-based information
with insights from fiction and nonfiction, the arts, and other
humanistic disciplines is both desirable and crucial if we want to
modify perceptions and attitudes, increase our awareness and
understanding, and, in turn, develop more sustainable worldviews in
the era of the Anthropocene. Elegantly written and convincingly
argued, this book will appeal broadly to scholars and students
working in the fields of environmental studies, comparative
literatures, ecocriticism, environmental history, and Italian
studies.
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