Anthropocene Poetics
A literary studies research project led by Prof Eva Horn that explores the aesthetic and poetic implications of the Anthropocene. How can literature narrate and negotiate radically altered modes of existence? And which literary forms does a new understanding of nature call for?
Landscape, Life, Form: Anthropocene Poetics in Contemporary German Fiction
The much-discussed concept of the “Anthropocene” conveys the consciousness that humans have become a force of nature that severely affects the Earth system. Nature proves to be profoundly transformed by humans on a global scale. The term therefore calls for redefining the relationship between humans and nature: to live in the Anthropocene involves a new form of being-in-the-world.
Poetics as a Reflection on Form
The project’s fundational approach is that a poetics of the Anthropocene is above all a reflection on form: natural forms (organisms, landscapes) but also literary form (genre, narrative forms, style). We address our corpus of primary texts under two aspects: (1) we ask how forms of nature – landscapes and organisms – are (re)presented and which scientific theories of geology and evolution the authors take up and re-write; (2) we analyse the experiments in form – with genres, narrative modes, types of text – that literary texts on the Anthropocene engage in.
On the basis of these elements of form, our goal is to elaborate a poetics of the Anthropocene – on the assumption that the Anthropocene not only changes the human relationship to nature and the world, but also solicits a literary self-reflection that gives rise to an extensive exploration of literary forms and genres. Through exploring the different forms this literary self-reflection can take, we wish to demonstrate how literature itself becomes a medium for reflection on the relation between humans and nature in the Anthropocene.
This project is generously funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
Activities
- International Conference: “Elemental Voicing: Techniques and Aesthetics of a More-Than-Human Literature” (3-4 July 2025)
- International Conference: “Große Formen im Anthropozän” (5-6 December 2024)
- Workshop: “Blurry Bodies – Blurry Selves: Corporeality in the Anthropocene” (5 June 2024)
- Workshop: “Making Kin: Inter-Species Relationships in Posthumanist Thought” (25 January 2024)
- Workshop: “Perspectives on the Anthropocene: Works in Progress” (22 June 2023)
- Workshop: “Anthropocene Landscapes | Landschaften des Anthropozäns” (20 January 2023)
- Workshop: “Landschaft im Anthropozän: Neue Perspektiven auf ein altes Konzept” (27 May 2022)
- Workshop: “Alles eine Frage der Form? Literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf das Anthropozän” (27 April 2021)
