Through the weather glass

Burnett, L 2013, Through the weather glass , PhD thesis, University of Salford.

Preview

PDF - Accepted Version Download (5MB) | Preview

Abstract

This Creative Writing thesis argues for the need to rethink our understanding of climate change and focuses on the response of creative writers to this phenomenon, whilst also offering its own creative contribution. The critical component aims at articulating a post-climate change poetics. It reviews the mainstream literature in popular science writing, fiction and poetry from the point of view of a political frame-analysis of climate change, to demonstrate how a certain understanding of climate change maps onto conventions of literary genre. The thesis takes the view that many mainstream literary attempts to negotiate climate change are compromised by the teleological way in which they conceive of the phenomenon. As an alternative position, it draws on the work of climatologist Mike Hulme and physicist and cultural theorist Karen Barad to encourage participation in climate change as a condition for negotiating its meaning. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is proposed as a model for literary production informed by this poetics and as a model for the author’s own creative practice. The creative component of this thesis is an intra-generic text presenting the fictionalised narrative of a cycle expedition the author made from Salford to the Greek island of Ikaria in the summer of 2010. This substantial work aims to interrogate, imagine, and enquire into the epistemology of a post-climate change world.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Contributors:	Thurston, SD (Supervisor)
Themes:	Built and Human Environment Energy Health and Wellbeing Media, Digital Technology and the Creative Economy Memory, Text and Place Subjects outside of the University Themes
Schools:	Schools > School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences > Centre for English Literature and Language Schools > School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences
Funders:	Non funded research
Depositing User:	L Burnett
Date Deposited:	11 Dec 2013 12:43
Last Modified:	30 Nov 2015 23:35
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/29511

Actions (login required)

Edit record (repository staff only)