ANTHROPOCENE MODERNISMS: ECOLOGICAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE “HUMAN AGE” IN ELIOT, WILLIAMS, TOOMER, AND WOOLF A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Rebekah A. Taylor May 2016 Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials i Dissertation written by Rebekah A. Taylor B.A., Augusta State University, 2007 M.A., Middle Tennessee State University, 2010 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2016 Approved by _____________________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Kevin Floyd _____________________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Ryan Hediger ___________________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Tammy Clewell ___________________________________ Emariana Widner ___________________________________ Deborah Barnbaum Accepted by ____________________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert Trogdon ____________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank ii TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………………...iii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………..vii CHAPTERS I. Introduction to Anthropocene Modernisms ………………………………………………1 Early Twentieth Century Formulations of “Anthropocene”……………..10 The Environmental Tradition and the Role of Literary Criticism……….19 Defining Modernist Form(s) / Aesthetic(s)………………………………30 The Example of Water…………………………………………………...39 Preview of Chapters……………………………………………………...44 II. “Fear in a handful of dust”: The Waste Land’s Meditation on our Anthropogenic Age...48 Epigraph and the Age of the Earth……………………………………….54 Water’s Paradox: Drought and Drowning……………………………….60 “What the Thunder Said” and Elemental Ecocriticism…………………..70 III. Imagining with the Anthropocene: Evolution, Extinction, and Estranged Spring in Spring and All…………………………………………………………………………...............75 Establishing Scales………………………………………………………76 Extinction and Evolution………………………………………………...82 Estranged Spring…………………………………………………………95 Imagination: The Fifth Element? ………………………………………..99 IV. “The great beast stamping”: The Waves as an Allegory of the Anthropocene ………...104 Ecological Form and the Mesh…………………………………………106 Water……………………………………………………………………113 iii Strange Materialities……………………………………………………127 Loss of World Played out in Human Realm……………………………137 Concluding Remarks / Future Directions………………………………148 V. Toomer’s Singing Bodies: Recovering Nature in Cane and the Anthropocene………..154 Nature’s Song…………………………………………………………..159 Sugarcane, the Boll Weevil, and More on Cane’s Material Realities….173 Nature’s Pluralities and Paradoxes……………………………………..184 AFTERWORD………………………………………………………………………………….195 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………..197 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Marks Beginning Each of the Three Sections of Cane ……...…………………………5 Figure 2. Cartoon from The Southern Herald, 2 September 1910…………………………….....57 v For my family In loving memory of Ann. vi Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the patience and scholarly rigor of my advisors, Kevin Floyd and Ryan Hediger. I have been extremely fortunate to enjoy the friendship and provocations of both Kevin and Ryan who held me to the highest standard while allowing me room to detour down rabbit holes on occasion. Although most of the tangential explorations that took place along the way are not obvious in this version of the dissertation, these ideas required time and consideration from my advisors and will yield future projects that will only increase my indebtedness to Kevin and Ryan for their helpful comments and rigorous reading. Kevin first challenged me as a student in his Marxist theory course, and his commitment to refining ideas beyond vague generalizations has been indispensible to this project and my development as a scholar. I am especially thankful for Ryan’s willingness to take on this project when he did not know me. From the first long, rambling email, he helped me think through the project when I was hardly able to articulate the dissertation’s argument myself. No aspiring scholar could ask for better mentors than Kevin and Ryan. A heartfelt thank you to the rest of my committee, especially Tammy Clewell, who has been an invaluable support system from the very first day I visited Kent. As a student in Tammy’s course, I first admired her precision of insight, and Tammy was instrumental in helping me think through some of the early ideas in this dissertation. The faculty and staff at Kent State have been exceptional, and I am appreciative of the support that the English department has given me during the completion of this project. This document is one expression of my interest in what we might call nature, and despite all that is wrong in the world, I am fortunate to pursue an academic career during a time when scholars in the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, new materialisms, biopolitics, and animal studies are bringing concerns of the nonhuman world into focus. I am thankful for the list of vii scholars working in these fields who create such a rich intellectual community devoted to important issues facing our world. Much of the highly theoretical and intellectually rigorous work being done by my colleagues was, and still is, put into practice on a piece of land in northern Georgia where my family’s cabin rests. In many ways, then, this dissertation has been a lifetime in the making. As early as I can remember, my parents and grandparents taught me to live deliberately and pay attention to the variety of nonhuman bodies that surround me. Trees provide the warmth for my family’s home, and while I was often not keen on our wood cutting and splitting adventures (especially in my teenage years), handling the wood of fallen trees attuned me to the variety of insects, grubs, mosses, and spiders that live and work between the bark and heart of a tree. So, I have to acknowledge such influences as my grandmother who salvaged every last green bean from her garden and was not bothered by the indiscriminate marks left by bug or beetle, nor whether those critters ended up in her cooking. And my mother who not only initiates the majority of our firewood expeditions but also models a way of living that is in sync with the natural world and includes getting my hands dirty and never taking more than I need. I have to also acknowledge my father’s influence, the man who not only built the family home with pine trees from the land, but would also pause midstride to show me an animal track or an especially interesting rock. This attentiveness extends to unlikely things for my father, a man who makes promises to automobiles and keeps them; he is the expert of recycling and repurposing, and I am constantly forced to think about ordinary objects in new ways when they become part of a system they were never intended for but fit perfectly. My interest in the human relationship to the natural world, and my concern over the reality of our current environmental emergency, follows these influences. Therefore, this dissertation, and my interest in environmental approaches to literature viii more broadly, comes in part out of a love for things like fresh vegetables picked from the garden, goats and rabbits, and 1985 Dodge Ram vans. Aside from their influence, my parents remain an unwavering support system. They are my still point, and there is no way I could ever repay all they have given me. I also want to acknowledge my grandfather, Tom Vasil, who taught me to write letters, speak out, and resist mediocrity. My nieces and nephews are a constant bright spot, and my brothers and sisters-in- law are the best friends of my life. I am also indebted to my mentor and friend Pat Bradley, who helped me find my voice years ago and continues to inspire me in the present. I want to thank Lisa Williams for her friendship and encouragement when I feel like giving up, and my animal companion Huckleberry who knows much more about everything than I ever will. Many thanks to Patrice Shannon who never fails to amaze me. Over the last five years, Dan Miller has helped me keep things in perspective and made me laugh. Thank you to Sandra Amitay for believing in my work and encouraging me to dream big. Finally, I would like to thank Bradley Wiseman for being a good sport and standing by me through this crazy process. Maybe I will dedicate a book to you one day. ix Introduction to Anthropocene Modernisms We now recognize the twentieth century as a moment of great environmental consequence, a period of time in which the “world's population quadrupled…the global economy expanded 14-fold, energy use increased 16 times, and industrial output expanded by a factor of 40,” and, consequently, “carbon dioxide emissions also went up 13-fold, and water use rose 9 times” (Kennedy xvi). Increased carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is, of course, a defining characteristic of the new phase of the human-Earth story, and one of great consequence, as amounts are now measured to be “one third over preindustrial levels” (Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen, and Crutzen 2229). Carbon dioxide is the principal agent of global climate change, and The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cites two main factors for increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide―leading to global warming―fossil fuel use and land-use change (IPCC). Both are specifically human caused. The last century saw “The Moment of Great