Il corso regolare degli eventi

Alcune considerazioni ecocritiche su Adalbert Stifter e Amitav Ghosh

Abstract

The essay undertakes an ecocritical comparison between Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868), a nineteenth‑century Central European writer, and Amitav Ghosh (1956), a contemporary author of Indian origin. Through an analysis of the Vorrede to Bunte Steine (1852) and of the essay The Great Derangement (2016), it places in dialogue two contrasting yet complementary visions of the relationship between humanity and nature. Stifter celebrates the continuity and harmony of the natural world, assigning moral significance to the ordinary dimension of experience and to the “gentle law” that governs silent and enduring phenomena. Ghosh, by contrast, exposes the modern realist novel’s inability to represent extreme climatic events and advocates for new narrative forms capable of giving voice to the nonhuman and confronting the global ecological crisis. Particular attention is devoted to the circumstance that, despite their separation by historical period and cultural context, both writers share the conviction that literature performs an ethical and transformative function: for Stifter, to teach an attentive perception of the strength inherent in quiet and continuous things; for Ghosh, to restore the complexity and urgency of contemporary environmental collapse.