What is it about?
Petro-literature reveals in a very powerful manner the split attitudes of contemporary societies concerning the issue of oil-mining and the effects it has on landscapes and social structures.
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Why is it important?
Agressive oil mining threatens and destroys essential mega-biotopes, as for example the Athabasca Sands in Canada and the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The article "Sublime Oilscapes" shows how literature can contribute to creating an awareness for the problemtic discrepancy of ecological and economic concerns. Literature, with its specific methods and its multidimensional make-up, fulfills functions which cannot, in that way, be fulfilled by other media.
Perspectives
Literature and the humanities have for a long time been excluded from debates about the precarious environmental state of the earth. However, as the ecology of our natural surrounding is also linked to the ecology of thinking, that is, to creativity, and to the scholarly investigation of creative models, the eco-critical appreciation of literature and the arts fulfills essential cultural tasks.
Maria Löschnigg
University of Graz
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This page is a summary of: ‘Sublime Oilscapes’: Literary Depictions of Landscapes Transformed by the Oil Industry, Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, January 2017, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/ang-2017-0049.
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