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Shin, Moonsu
- Journal of English Language & Literature
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- v.57 no.1
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- pp.3-25
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- 2011
As extremes of climate such as heavy storms, rainfalls, and droughts tend to be routine in recent years, global climate change becomes a serious concern not only for natural scientists but also for scholars of the human sciences. Efforts to tackle the anthropogenic climate change certainly require not only scientific knowledge about it but also a new sociocultural paradigm for valorizing and respecting nature in its own right. The huge casualties and mass destruction caused by recent climate disasters also remind us that nature has been an important factor to bring about changes in human history-a fact largely ignored in traditional history. This again validates the ecocritical request to prioritize place, physical setting, or the relationship characters hold with the natural world in understanding literary works. In this context this paper aims to demonstrate the importance of the meteorological vision in creating as well as understanding literary and cultural texts by examining such works as Shelley's "The Cloud," Byron's "Darkness," Keats's "To Autumn," all produced during the period of dramatic climate change including "the year without summer." It also briefly discusses Roland Emmerich's 2004 movie The Day after Tomorrow as a way of understanding recent cultural responses to the crisis of global warming.