| < >Energy, Ecocriticism, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Novel Ecologiesdraws on energy concepts to revisit some of our favorite books-Mansfield Park,Jane Eyre,Great Expectations, andThe War of the Worlds-and the ways these shape our sense of ourselves as ecological beings. Barri J. Gold regards the laws of thermodynamics not solely as a set of physical principles, but also as a cultural and conceptual form that we can use to reimagine our historically vexed relationship to the natural world. Beginning with an examination of the parallel inceptions ofenergyandecology< i> in the mid-nineteenth century, this book considers the question of how we may better read and interpret our world, developing a recipe for experimental reading and insisting upon the importance of literary studies in a world driving to ecological catastrophe. &nbs ;
Barri J. Gold is Professor and Chair of English at Muhlenberg College, USA, and author ofThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science (2010).
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