Lee Rozelle probes the metaphor of environmental catastrophe in American literature of the last 150 years. In each instance, Rozelle finds evidence that the ecosublime--nature experienced as an instance of wonder and fear--profoundly reflects spiritual and political responses to the natural world, America s increasingly anti-ecological trajectory, and the ascendance of a post-natural landscape.
In the 19th century, Rozelle argues, Isabella Bird and Edgar Allan Poe represented the western wilderness as culturally constructed and idealized landscapes. Gardens, forests, and frontiers are...

In Zombiescapes and Phantom Zones: Ecocriticism and the Liminal from "Invisible Man" to "The Walking Dead," Lee Rozelle chronicles the weirdest, ugliest, and most mixed-up characters to appear on the literary scene since World War II--creatures intimately linked to damaged habitats that rise from the muck, not to destroy or rule the world, but to save it. The book asks what happens to these landscapes after the madness, havoc, and destruction. What monsters and magic surface then?

Rozelle argues that zombiescapes and phantom zones depicted in the book become catalysts for...

Explores 19th-century, modern, postmodern, and millennial texts as they portray the changing ecological face of America Lee Rozelle probes the metaphor of environmental catastrophe in American literature of the last 150 years. In each instance, Rozelle finds evidence that the ecosublime--nature experienced as an instance of wonder and fear--profoundly reflects spiritual and political responses to the natural world, America’s increasingly anti-ecological trajectory, and the ascendance of a post-natural landscape. In the 19th century, Rozelle argues, Isabella Bird and Edgar Allan Poe...