Unruly Microcosms in Contemporary Eco-Fiction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5339248 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liliane Campos (0000-0003-0839-3120, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 45-63 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/sub.2023.a913890 |
| OpenAlex | W4389253620 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This article theorizes the disruptive epistemic work performed by microcosms in recent eco-fiction. Contemporary fiction often explores large-scale ecological disruption through smaller organisms and environments, enabling readers to perceive the Earth through analogy, allegory and metaphor. Within and against this scale-free reading, I argue that the microcosm has become a fracturing trope that troubles relations between scales. Drawing on fiction by T. C. Boyle, A. S. Byatt, Amitav Ghosh, Ali Smith, and Karen Tei Yamashita, I read the microcosm as a critical tool of Anthropocene awareness, because it foregrounds and questions scalar collapse -the epistemic projection of one scale onto another
Allegory · Analogy · Anthropocene · Art · Cartography · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Hybridity · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Microcosm · Reading (process) · Scale (ratio) · Trope (literature) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |