Trees in Literatures and the Arts

Embracing the intersectional methodological outlook of the environmental humanities, the contributors to this edited collection explore the entanglements of cultures, ecologies, and socio-ethical issues in the roles of trees and their relationships with humans through narratives in literature and art.

Carmen Concilio is associate professor at the University of Turin.

Daniela Fargione is assistant professor at the University of Turin.

Part I Human-Tree Kinship

Chapter 1: On Becoming-Tree. An Alter-native, Arbo-real Line of Flight in World Literatures in English

Chapter 2: Pacific Perspectives of the Anthropocene: Trees and Human Relationships

Chapter 3: Becoming-botanic: Vegetal Forms of Mourning in Deborah Levys Swimming Home and Han KangsThe Vegetarian

Chapter 4: Russian Bodies, Russian Trees: Examples of Interconnections between the Tree of the Motherland and the Soviet People

Part II Spiritual Trees

Chapter 5:Trees as the Masters of Monks. Some Observations on the Role of Trees inThe Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Chapter 6:The Ash-Tree as Unwobbling Pivot in Pounds Early and Late Poetry

Chapter 7: Seamus Heaneys Arboreal Poetry

Chapter 8:Between Ecology and Ritual. Images of New Zealand Trees in Grace, Finlayson, Hilliard and Sargeson

Chapter 9:The Tree that Therefore I Am. Humans, Trees and Gods in Cosimo Terlizzis Cinema

Part III Trees in/and Literatures

Chapter 10: Flora J. Cookes Tree Stories: Progressive Education and Nature in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century United States

Chapter 11: Talking Trees in Amazonian Novels of the Jungle

Chapter 12: Gardens of Hell, Trees of Death: For a Poetics of Urban Nature in the Lyrics of George Bacovia

Chapter 13: The Poetization of the Exotic in Early 20th Century Russian Literature: Nikolaj Gumilëvs Palm Tree

Part IV Trees in the Arts

Chapter 14: Mother Sequoia. Awaiting an Imperceptible Enlightenment Among Millennial TreesChapter 15: Performing with Spruce Stumps and Old Tjikko. On the Individuality of Trees

Chapter 16: Tuning and Being Tuned by a Patch of Boreal Forest: Works from the Boreal Poetry Garden, Newfoundland, Canada

Part V Trees and Time

Chapter 17: Tree Photography, Arboreal Timescapes and the Archive in Richard PowerssThe Overstory

Chapter 18: Family Trees: Mnemonics, Genealogy, Identity and Cultural Memory