‘Climate Fiction Narratives’: A Study of Maja Lundes Novels – The History of Bees and The End of the Ocean

Conference: The European Conference on Arts & Humanities (ECAH2021)
Title: ‘Climate Fiction Narratives’: A Study of Maja Lundes Novels – The History of Bees and The End of the Ocean
Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation
Authors:
Mega J Pandya, Manipal Institute of Communication, India

Abstract:

Climate fiction (Cli-fi) is a genre that is gaining momentum over the last decade due to the proclivity in the environmental imagination towards issues concerning climate change. As such, this interdisciplinary area calls upon new voices in the literary scape to address pressing environmental concerns that plague us today. In a growing dystopian world where terra-transformation is the norm, disrupting fixities in life as also influencing the Anthropocene setting on a global scale, cli-fi provides a potentially fertile field of study in the broad humanities. Perhaps, it is at this juncture in the contemporary scenario, that the emerging voice of the visionary Norwegian writer Maja Lunde needs to be heard the most. The author in her two novels - The History of Bees and The End of the Ocean, opens a complementing intersection via the ‘land’ versus the ‘water’ perspective on matters of climate change and mitigation. Stemming from this line of enquiry, the research study at hand attempts to closely examine the following key precepts: literary attempts in eco-historicism, an exploration of the theme of climate mitigation and adaptation, the author’s attitude towards climate education and ecological consciousness as evolving through various characters, and also viewpoints on post-modern vs. post-carbon descriptions of environmental utopia(s) and/or dystopia(s). In this connection, the study provides a thematic and conceptual frame of analysis to configure the critical standpoints it dwells upon. Interesting key findings include the theme of ‘Biophilia hypothesis’ as well as the ‘time-theory perspective’ which Lunde integrates into her novels.



Virtual Presentation


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