Isak Dinesen’s Ecological Power

Series: 

Author:
Peter Mortensen
Danish writer Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen (1885–1962) was a colonial plantation manager, big-game hunter, animal rights activist, nature conservationist, flower gardener, and much more. Most importantly, Dinesen wrote thought-provoking, mind-bending, boundary-shifting tales that can help us think constructively and creatively about many facets of life on our troubled planet. Isak Dinesen’s Ecological Power reexamines Dinesen in the context of 21st-century debates about time, animals, plants, gender, families, the idea of nature, and the very question of what it means to be human in a more-than-human world. We urgently need to power our societies and imaginations in new ways, and this book reconsiders Dinesen’s stories as an inexhaustible and so far largely untapped source of ecocultural energy.
Copyright Year:
2026
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Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-72654-3
Publication:
24 Nov 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-72443-3
Publication:
27 Nov 2025
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About MyBook
Peter Mortensen (Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins University, 1998) is Associate Professor and Head of English at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. He has published widely in the fields of literary studies and ecocriticism, and he is the co-editor, with Hannes Bergthaller, of Framing the Environmental Humanities (2018).
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations for Editions of Dinesen’s Works in English and Danish

Introduction
 1 Hopenhagen
 2 Nature, Environment, Ecology
 3 Precursors and Argument
 4 Ecocriticism
 5 Dinesen’s Texts
 6 Boganis and Osceola
 7 Ecological Power
 8 “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale”
 9 This Book

1 Out of Joint: Time Ecology in “The Deluge at Norderney” and “Babette’s Feast”
 1 Introduction
 2 Anachrony
 3 Mythic Time
 4 Queer Time
 5 Disaster Time
 6 Food and Time
 7 Chronos
 8 Kairos
 9 Revolutionary Time
 10 Turtle Time
 11 Conclusion

2 A Tangled World: Humans, Animals, and Plants in Out of Africa
 1 Introduction
 2 Ngũgĩ and Bjørnvig
 3 Human Animals
 4 Animal Humans
 5 Plant Writing
 6 Plant Worlds
 7 Plant People
 8 Conclusion

3 In Flux: Wet Masculinities in “Peter and Rosa,” “The Monkey,” and “Ehrengard”
 1 Introduction
 2 Flow and Flux
 3 Sea-Changes
 4 Admissions and Emissions
 5 Regendering Flow
 6 Conclusion

4 Unfamiliar Families: Kinship Trouble in Last Tales
 1 Introduction
 2 Gothic Celibacy
 3 Marriage and Its Discontents
 4 Fanatical Virginity
 5 Convent Life
 6 Queer Breastfeeding
 7 The Wet Nurse’s Revenge
 8 The Witch’s Curse
 9 Conclusion

5 Weird Tales for Strange Times: Ruptures with Reality in “Eneboerne,” “The Monkey,” and The Angelic Avengers
 1 Introduction
 2 Uhygge All Around
 3 Something Wrong
 4 Impenetrable Darkness
 5 Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index
Research librarians, academics, advanced students and others interested in ecocriticism, English literature, world literature, and Scandinavian studies.
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