Ecocriticism and the idea of culture : biology and the bildungsroman / Helena Feder.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Introduction, biology and the idea of culture -- Candide and the dialectic of enlightenment -- Ecocriticism and the production of monstrosity in Frankenstein -- Placing modernity in Orlando -- Consuming culture in a small place and among flowers -- Dehumanization, animality, and the bildungsroman.

Arguing that the Bildungsroman is humanist culture's own origin story, Feder draws on the work of biologists in her examination of works by Voltaire, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf and Jamaica Kincaid. She dramatizes Western culture's own awareness of the instability of the binary of nature and culture, making a timely intervention in the ongoing culture-nature debate, bridging the gap between cultural theory and biologically grounded research.

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