Publication details
Přizpůsobit se, nebo zemřít? Komický a tragický modus v klimatické fikci
| Title in English | Adapt or die? Comic and tragic modus in climate fiction |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | In a 1974 study by the ecologist and literary scholar Joseph W. Meeker characterized Western culture as subject to a tragic mode, characterized by strong polarization, dualism of culture and nature and the notion of the sublime of man over nature and of sublime abstractions over of adaptation and survival. Meeker takes this approach to life and the world is one of the reasons of the environmental crisis and a condition for avoiding catastrophe, he considered a move towards a comic mode, that takes into account the complexity of relationships and the mutual interdependence between culture and nature and seeks ways to adaptation. Don D. Elgin (1985) developed his thesis of the tragic and comic approach with examples prominent works of fantasy literature. Marek Oziewicz (2022) capitalized on these impulses in the notion of ecocidal ecocidal unconscious and proposed a distinction between Anthropocene fantasy literature and fantasy for the Anthropocene; the former in confronting the climate crisis, the anthropocentric values and attitudes, and the latter challenges them and offers visions of a biospheric future. The paper - after an introductory presentation speculative fiction as a convenient tool for grasping "counterintuitive reality of the Anthropocene" (Clark 2019) - I will focus on exploring the tragic and comic approach in works of contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi), that is, literature reflecting anthropogenic climate change, and taking into account the findings of affective and empirical ecocriticism on the use of humor and satire in the representation of environmental crisis. |
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