Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos challenges us in a time of climate crisis to find more common ground between the dual projects of ecocriticism and ecotheology.
This book argues that in our postsecular age, literature has become an important repository of theological wisdom that can, like formal work in ecotheology, provide the moral grounds for environmental care. However, for any cosmological understanding to be adequate to the challenges before us, it must be responsive to the often-painful contingencies and uncertainties that inhere in the cosmos, something that both ecocriticism and ecotheology have often neglected. After a treatment of the ecocritical and ecotheological questions that pertain to the religious/secular divide, the study then turns to four contemporary American writers-Annie Dillard, Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, and David James Duncan-as examples. Each uses the contingency of literary form and its promise of wholeness in order to imagine reasons for hope in light of the unpredictability and untold human and more-than-human suffering that lie at the heart of nature.
The book will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers interested in ecotheology, religious studies, environmental literature, the environmental humanities, and environmental studies more broadly. It offers a needed paradigm shift in how Western societies have tended to misuse both secularity and religion.
| ISBN: | 9781032769059 |
| Publication date: | 26th December 2025 |
| Author: | George B Handley |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 234 pages |
| Series: | Routledge Environmental Humanities |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Theology Climate change |
Literature and Ecotheology: From Chaos to Cosmos challenges us in a time of climate crisis to find more common ground between the dual projects of ecocriticism and ecotheology.
This book argues that in our postsecular age, literature has become an important repository of theological wisdom that can, like formal work in ecotheology, provide the moral grounds for environmental care. However, for any cosmological understanding to be adequate to the challenges before us, it must be responsive to the often-painful contingencies and uncertainties that inhere in the cosmos, something that both ecocriticism and ecotheology have often neglected. After a treatment of the ecocritical and ecotheological questions that pertain to the religious/secular divide, the study then turns to four contemporary American writers-Annie Dillard, Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, and David James Duncan-as examples. Each uses the contingency of literary form and its promise of wholeness in order to imagine reasons for hope in light of the unpredictability and untold human and more-than-human suffering that lie at the heart of nature.
The book will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers interested in ecotheology, religious studies, environmental literature, the environmental humanities, and environmental studies more broadly. It offers a needed paradigm shift in how Western societies have tended to misuse both secularity and religion.
Literature and Ecotheology features in the following genres: Christianity, Chaos theory, Philosophy: metaphysics and ontology, Philosophy of religion, Cosmology and the universe, Social impact of environmental issues, Earth sciences
Literature and Ecotheology is available in Paperback, Hardback
Literature and Ecotheology was written by George B Handley and published by Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis
Literature and Ecotheology has 234 pages
Yes it is part of Routledge Environmental Humanities series
£43.19