Ecologia letteraria e altri scritti di ecocritica, by Serenella Iovino, published by Edizioni Ambiente. With Serenella Iovino

We humans are animals that tell stories, and culture is the result of our evolution. Novels, works of art, and music are not abstract “spiritual” elements disconnected from our physicality, but rather a feature of the material life of our species.

We need an imagination that helps us break out of our species boundaries, an imagination that recognizes and gives voice to the whole world that we consider “other” but which is instead part of us. Above all, we need to give voice to marginalized, silenced, dispossessed subjects, whether human or non-human.

Literature helps us understand and express all this because it suggests new words, gives us models for reading reality, and invites us to continue imagining together with the world.

When it was first published in 2006, Ecologia letteraria gave shape to an intuition that, in Italy, did not yet have a name or a shared lexicon. At a time when ecocriticism was still unknown, it spoke of literature and the environment, ecological imagination, and narrative forms. Since then, it has become a point of reference for those who recognize ecology not only as an environmental issue but also as a cultural, political, and poetic paradigm.

The new, slightly revised edition is accompanied by a preface by poet Antonella Anedda and a new series of essays that collect his legacy and relaunch his trajectory at a time when those questions—about life, matter, landscape, responsibility—are even more urgent.