Object

Group publication title:

InScriptum

Contributor:

Guidotti, Francesca. Ed.  ; Ożarska, Magdalena. Ed.  ; Bianchi, Marina. Ed.  ; Keefe, Sharon. Ed.  ; Bernstein, Beth A. Ed.  ; Newman, John G. Ed.  ; Dossena, Marina. Ed.  ; Łodej, Sylwester. Ed. Marczewska, Marzena. Ed.

Abstract:

This article traces shifting literary responses to environmental catastrophe and species extinction in The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley and Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood. Through the figures of Lionel Verney and Jimmy (aka Snowman), the novels reimagine the trope of the last man to reflect evolving conceptions of ecological crisis, subjectivity, and human-nonhuman relationality. Shelley’s post-apocalyptic landscape emerges as an elegiac space of metaphysical solitude and symbolic ruins, while Atwood depicts a genetically reengineered biosphere shaped by techno-capitalist excess and biopolitical control. The article argues that the shift from Shelley’s Romantic ecophobia to Atwood’s posthuman eco-alienation marks a broader transformation in literary imaginaries of the future: from the sublime indifference to the hyper-mediated ecologies of the Anthropocene. Framed through the lens of ecophobia, the study explores how narration functions as a mechanism of cultural memory and symbolic resistance, recasting survival from a biological imperative into an act of linguistic and ethical persistence. Ultimately, the article seeks to demonstrate that Shelley and Atwood, despite their divergent aesthetics and temporal registers, converge in their portrayal of storytelling as a vital strategy for negotiating the disintegration of anthropocentric paradigms.

Table of contents:

Spis treści
Articles
7 Alessandra Goggio Die Gefahren einer „ästhetischen“ Erziehung: Zu Karl Gutzkows Roman Wally, die Zweiflerin (The Dangers of an “Aesthetic” Education: On Karl Gutzkow’s Novel Wally, die Zweiflerin)
27 Alessandra Calanchi Detecting the Domestic Soundscape in the ‘Age of Noise’: Alcott, Green, Campbell, Gilman
45 Andrea Acqualagna “Frozen Stillness”: The American Sublime and the Meteorological Element of Snow in John Fante’s “Books of Youth”
67 Alessandro Secomandi La “loca de la mina”: una lectura de Amirbar, de Álvaro Mutis (The Madwoman in the Mine: A Reading of Amirbar, by Álvaro Mutis)
93 Laura Todeschini The World Was All Before Them: From Preservation to Reconfiguration in Shelley’s The Last Man and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
115 Angela Locatelli Labyrinths of Memory in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi Book reviews
143 (Reviewed by Jasen Rodríguez, Texas State University) Michael Kidd, Black Protagonists of Early Modern Spain: Three Key Plays in Translation. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2023, xiv + 337 pp.
149 Resenado por Ana I. Simón Alegre, Adelphi University, New York Carolina Alzate, Un cuento que no se acaba. Agripina Samper de Ancínar e Inés Ancínar Samper (1848-1892). Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2024, 435 pp.
153 Resenado por José de María Romero Barea, I.E.S. Azahar, Sevilla Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Los nombres de Feliza. Madrid: Alfaguara, 2025, 288 pp.
157 Reviewed by Camilla Holm Soelseth, OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University Daniel Scott Snelson, The Little Database – A Poetics of Media Formats. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2025, 224 pp.

Place of publishing:

Kielce

Physical description:

s.93-114

ISSN:

2720-2402 (online)

Publisher:

Jan Kochanowski University Press

Date issued:

2025

Identifier:

doi:10.25951/14188

Language:

angielski

Is part of:

InScriptum. A Journal of Language and Literary Studies

Has part:

vol.6

Type:

tekst

Access rights:

otwarty dostęp

License:

Licencja Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa - Bez utworów zależnych (CC-BY-ND)

Format:

application/pdf