Sorry for the slow posting:
Edited Volume: Madness in the Woods
Since the beginning of storytelling the narrative of being lost in the woods or of choosing to live in the woods as a heterotopian space has remained popular. While literary naturalists praise the woods‘ natural and sublime beauty, universal and national myths of the forest from the early settlement until today also include the dark, gothic and uncanny side of nature. Puritan thought associated the “hideous and desolate wilderness” (William Bradford) with the danger of getting lost in the woods where a pure soul might lose its sanity. Native American legends as well as European folktales draw a picture of haunted woods where spirits and ghosts dwell, but also as places where challenges are mastered and where the person who enters returns as somebody else.
We invite articles that focus on this dark side of forests in literature and film, that address the ambivalence of the forest’s offer for shelter and protection from the dangers of civilisation and the social sphere, but for the price of confrontation with the uncanny.
Submissions could include (but are not limited to):
How certain genres approach the topic
How the uncanny woods are represented in TV series
How ecological disasters, or environmental problems such as climate change or deforestation interfer with the narrator’s, protagonist’s or spectator‘s psyche.
How the dark and uncanny woods in colonizer and settler writings represent a liminal, irregulated space.
How the representation of the uncanny woods has changed over time.
How the woods are gendered, especially when they are uncanny.
How ecopsychology and disorders connect with the uncanny woods.
If you are interested in being included in this volume, please send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short CV to heike.schwarz@phil.uni-augsburg.de and tina-karen.pusse@nuigalway.ie by the 15th of May, 2014.
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