Bénédicte Meillons Ecopoetics of Reenchantment is a groundbreaking literary study that reinvents magical realism into the new concept of liminal realism, which perfectly matches the authors urge to reconsider the epistemological duality that has long regarded nature and the sensible world as subservient to reason and to envision a new terrestrial spirituality combining poetry with a scientific approach to the natural world. If many of the writers and texts Meillon studies through her miraculous close readings are American ecofeminists, her arguments daringly make Rachel Carson resonate with Richard Powers, Ann Pancake with Ron Rash, and Leslie Marmon Silko with, most surprisingly and most convincingly, French novelist Jean Giono. Its both a challenging and a very pleasant book; it confirms Meillons primordial place in ecocriticism. -- Frédérique Spill, author of The Radiance of Small Things in Ron Rashs Writing "Bndicte Meillon in Ecopoetics of Reenchantment provides a haunting and melodic reinvigoration of the notion of enchantment, with an emphasis on song, that will echo in readers minds far beyond the confines of its pages. Her ecofeminist phenomenological readings of literary works display a dazzling synergy of new and established disciplinary fields that demonstrates how much ecopoetics has benefitted from new materialism and other ways of conceiving human entanglement with the world of which we remain inseparably a part." -- Patrick Murphy, University of Central Florida "A work of remarkable critical breadth and nuance. Drawing on an inspiring range of literary, scientific, and philosophical sources, Meillon proposes an audacious remedy to the withering stillness of an age of disenchantment and ecocide. We must touch, smell, taste, and above all listen to the sensuous matter of ecopoetic speech, and draw up from dark, silent wells of repression exuberant songs of the Earth, the wild rhythms and melodies of a more-than-human world that is our most vital dwelling place." -- Terry Harpold, University of Florida In this wonder-full work Bénédicte Meillon assembles and analyzes a unique corpus of fiction, which is entangled with scientific understandings, in which diverse literary creatives are expressing kinship with and belonging to the entire community of life. Meillon demonstrates that these spiritualities have significant, global, cultural traction. Diverse environmental studies scholars will find Ecopoetics of Reenchantment to be fascinating, valuable, and even inspiring. -- Bron Taylor, author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future
