BOOK REVIEW: DANIEL A. FINCH-RACE, STEPHANIE POSTHUMUS (EDS.), “FRENCH ECOCRITICISM. FROM THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY”, PETER LANG, 2017, 294 P.

Abstract

Mostly sceptic towards politically oriented approaches in cultural studies - such as postcolonialism, gender or animal studies - French critics have also been slower in adopting methodologies from the field of ecocriticism, which emerged and developed mostly in the anglophone context. French publications addressing environmental concerns in humanities became more prolific in the last years and the present volume, French Ecocriticism. From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century, responds the need to draw a framework for the French ecocriticism, casting light upon specific traits and directions that distinguish it from the anglophone tradition.

As the editors Daniel A. Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus explain in the introduction, one of the purposes of this volume is to demonstrate that ecocriticism does not solely deal with concrete political ecological commitment, but equally with formal and aesthetic elements. It is also worth mentioning that, reuniting studies conducted by researchers from different countries, one of the strong points of the work is that it relies on a cross-cultural perspective.