Literature and Weather, Fachbücher

'Literature and Weather. Shakespeare &ndash, Goethe &ndash, Zola' is dedicated to the relation between literature and weather, i.e. a cultural practice and an everyday phenomenon that has played very different epistemic roles in the history of the world. The study undertakes an archaeology of literature&rsquo,s affinity to the weather which tells the story of literature&rsquo,s weathery self-reflection and its creative reinventions as a medium in different epistemic and social circumstances. The book undertakes extensive close readings of three exemplary literary texts: Shakespeare&rsquo,s The Tempest, Goethe&rsquo,s The Sufferings of Young Werther and Zola&rsquo,s The Rougon-Macquarts. These readings provide the basis for reconstructing three distinct formations, negotiating the relationship between literature and weather in the 17th, the 18th and the 19th centuries. The study is a pioneering contribution to the recent debates of literature&rsquo,s indebtedness to the environment. It initiates a rewriting of literary history that is weather-sensitive, the question of literature&rsquo,s agency, its power to affect, cannot be raised without understanding the way the weather works in a certain cultural formation.