"A highly accomplished and astute series of critical readings of a selection of Irish literary texts. Sen’s deployment of the notion of sovereignty in the context of Irish ecocriticism and global climate crisis is original and timely."—Eoin Flannery, author of Ireland and Ecocriticism: Literature, History, and Environmental Justice
"This is a sorely needed, brilliantly conceived book on the entanglements of Irish literature and history with earth history and the Anthropocene. Sen’s unique expertise in Irish Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and the Environmental Humanities makes him the perfect guide. Every page brims with conceptual insights and keen-eyed readings of Ireland’s rich lineage of environmentally-minded writers. A tour de force."—Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Description
In Irish Anthropocene, Malcolm Sen traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature is deeply engaged with climate change issues. Drawing upon concepts of sovereignty, precarity, and disaster, Sen examines Irish literary works and their concern with realms of the political, the economic, and the ecological. The association of greenness with Ireland and its role in the corporatization of Ireland Inc. has been robustly critiqued to reveal the underbelly of Ireland’s unsustainable energy and food regimes and its distressing environmental record with international climate change mitigation efforts.
Writing in the shadow of such emissions, contemporary authors are alert not only to the insincerity of pastoralist rhetoric and the instrumentalized greenery of Irish fiction, but they are also responding to the planetary-level threats dominating the discourse of the Anthropocene. The Irish canon has historically played a crucial role in Irish nationalism, and these works are often written at a time when questions of statehood and citizenship are increasingly at the forefront of Irish and geopolitical discourses.
Sen argues that Ireland’s fraught nationhood—and its resulting literature—can be used as a framework to analyze the ubiquitous, multigenerational scale of the climate crisis. Cleverly written and groundbreaking in scope, Sen’s analyses dissect the connection between Irish sovereignty, its literature, and the urgent climate disaster.
About the Author
Malcolm Sen is the director of the Environmental Humanities Specialization and an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the editor of A History of Irish Literature and the Environment and Race in Irish Literature and Culture.
May 2026