Plants in Contemporary Poetry by John Ryan - 9781138186286

Taylor & Francis

Positioned within current ecocritical scholarship, this volume is the first book-length study of the representations of plants in contemporary American, English, and Australian poetry. Through readings of botanically-minded writers including Les Murray, Louise Gl\u00FCck, and Alice Oswald, it addresses the relationship between language and the subjectivity, agency, sentience, consciousness, and intelligence of vegetal life. Scientific, philosophical, and literary frameworks enable the author to develop an interdisciplinary approach to examining the role of plants in poetry. Drawing from recent plant science and contributing to the exciting new field of critical plant studies, the author develops a methodology he calls \""botanical criticism\"" that aims to redress the lack of emphasis on plant life in studies of poetry. As a subset of ecocriticism, botanical criticism investigates how poets engage with plants literally and figuratively, materially and symbolically, in their works. Key .