The representation of the past Book

Until I read this collection of essays, I thought ecocriticism focused on literature, but more of these are about politics and society than about texts of any kind. The editors' introduction establishes the broad focus: they want ecocritics to consider urban environments, and they want city dwellers to remember "our place within ecosystems and the importance of this fact for understanding urban life and culture" (4). Some of the essays are text-based, particularly the three in the section devoted to "Urban Nature Writing": Gary Roberts's examination of walking in London in 18th-century and earlier poetry is interesting, and so is Joanne Gottlieb's comparison of 19th-century utopian and dystopian texts with 20th-century ones including an X-Files episode. The last essay, by Michael Branch, focuses on the simulacra of nature in a casino to show that in 21st-century America, the "nature" of cities has been replaced by more convenient, "hyperreal" fakes, and thus provides a fascinating but distressing conclusion to the volume.