ABSTRACT
The Introduction lays out the scope and aims of the book, situating it in the context of ecocritical research at the nexus of comparative literature, environmental history, and the concerned environmental humanities more generally. It emphasizes the topicality of the subject-matter—North Sea coastlines are eroding faster than any other in Europe—and argues for the importance of the literary imagination in understanding this region in an era of planetary crisis. I explore the concept of the Anthropocene in some depth, giving an overview of its scholarly application and the challenge it poses to disciplinary thinking. The final section lays out the reach of the project, explaining the “case study” approach of the chapters, and justifying the selection of the particular literary texts. I argue that this book’s focus on landscape allows fresh appraisal of both well-known and relatively unknown works, a decentering of established norms that is a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene.
