How Literature Comes to Matter

An interdisciplinary encounter between new materialist and object-oriented studies and literary criticism.
Through a rethinking of the relationship between the subject and object, the human and the nonhuman, this volume shows how literature and post-anthropocentric theory can illuminate each other in mutually productive ways. Focusing on how the study of literature is an underdeveloped field within 'the material turn', the introduction and each of the eleven chapters examine ways in which new materialist and object-oriented theory opens the study of literature in new ways just as they demonstrate the deep entanglements in literature of human and nonhuman realities.
The collection includes an Afterword by Timothy Morton and hands-on analyses and close readings of individual works by such diverse writers as Hans Christian Andersen, Djuna Barnes, Sylvia Plath, Georges Perec, Ayi Kwei Armah, Jeanette Winterson and Paolo Bacigalupi.
Sten Pultz Moslund is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark Marlene Karlsson Marcussen holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern Denmark where she is currently affiliated as an external lecturer. Martin Karlsson Pedersen holds a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern Denmark where he is currently affiliated as an external lecturer.

Sten Pultz Moslund is Associate Profess of Comparative Literature & English Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. He is co-author of The Postmigrant Condition: New Perspectives on Migration, Multiculturalism and the Arts (Routledge, 2018). He is author of Literature's Sensuous Geographies: Place Matters in Postcolonial Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Migration Literature and Hybridity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Making Use of History in New South African Fiction (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003). He is co-editor of The Culture of Migration: Politics, Aesthetics and Histories (IB Tauris, 2015). Marlene Marcussen is Assistant Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark. She is the author of a number of articles in Danish journals. Martin Karlsson Pederson is Assistant Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark.

Acknowledgements Foreword I. Introduction II. Matter-oriented Perspectives on Literary Techniques, Language and Representation 1. The Abundance of Things in the Midst of Writing: A Post-Anthropocentric View on Description and Georges Perec's Still Life/Style Leaf Marlene Karlsson Marcussen 2. Slow Narrative and the Perception of Material Forms Marco Caracciolo III. Object Intrusions in Subject-Centric Texts 3. Aisthetic Realities in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. A Matter-Oriented Reading of Postcolonial Literature Sten Pultz Moslund 4. Sylvia Plath's 'Tulips': On the Hostile Nature of Things Michael Karlsson Pedersen 5. 'We have nothing to be arrogant about' - Hans Christian Andersen and Anti-Anthropocentrism Torsten Bøgh Thomsen IV. Carnal Realities: Lively Flesh in Feminist and Queer Readings 6. Feminist New Materialism and Literary Studies: Methodological Meditations on the Tradition of Feminist Literary Criticism and (Post)Critique Tobias Skiveren 7. Djuna Barnes and Queer Interiorities Laura Oulanne 8. Corporeal Creativity and Queer Gaps in Time Karin Sellberg V. Capitalism, Crisis and the Anthropocene 9. Putting the Earth to Use: Reading Resources in the End Times (Through Science Fiction) Rune Graulund 10. Dry Ontology and Finance Capitalism: An Affective-Material Reading of Financial Crisis Fiction Martin Karlsson Pedersen 11. The New Work of Art in the Age of Capitalist Realism: Materiality/ Aura/ Apocalypse Maurizia Boscagli VI. Afterword 12. Woodenness: The (Palm) Heart of The Matter Timothy Morton Notes on Contributors Index.