Representations Of The Anthropocene From The Nineteenth Century To The Twenty-First Century: Richard Jefferies’s After London, Or Wild England, Doris Lessing’s Mara And Dann: An Adventure And Adam Nevill’s Lost Girl

Abstract

Bringing three novels together, namely Richard Jefferies’s post-apocalyptic work After London, or Wild England (1885) from the nineteenth century, Doris Lessing’s postapocalyptic Mara and Dann: An Adventure (1999) from the twentieth century, and Adam Nevill’s pre-apocalyptic Lost Girl (2015) from the twenty-first century of England within the scope of the Anthropocene, this dissertation aims at displaying the way English novel deals with the actual and/or imagined events and catastrophes in nature due to human intervention for three centuries. The Anthropocene is the name of the epoch reflecting the human impact on the nonhuman nature for centuries constantly accelerating especially after the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century that brought along technological advancement, urbanisation and increased population. The anthropogenic transformation in the nonhuman environment displays the disturbed balance of the Earth that manifests itself through catastrophes and destruction in nature. With this perspective, the focus of the dissertation is also on how the authors’ perspective dramatically alters as a result of worsening environmental conditions of their time and their individual experiences of life. The position of these novels among similar novels dealing with environmental problems will be another focus of study for this dissertation. The three novels in focus, After London, or Wild England, Mara and Dann: An Adventure and Lost Girl will be studied through the Anthropocene theory embodying the green perspective of posthumanism and New Materialisms which bear a potential to generate effective solutions for the environmental, social and political crises in the twenty-first century world by breaking free from anthropocentricism.