The Power of Greenness: Poe in the Age of the Anthropocene.

This article focuses on Poe's short stories that, I argue, are relevant for the ecological concerns of the first decades of the twenty-first century: "The Colloquy of Monos and Una," "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," "The Island of the Fay," and "The Domain of Arnheim." As the "greenness" in the title suggests, my purpose here is to reexamine selected stories by Poe from the perspective of ecocriticism, especially the latest developments in ecological thought that fully acknowledge the formidable threshold of the last phase of the Anthropocene called the Great Acceleration. I test the applicability of the interpretative frameworks of "dark ecology" and "ecological posthumanism" as well as the notions of "hyperobjects" and "scale effects" to these stories. I hope to demonstrate that "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" and "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" carry a clear ecological message that has become topical in the contemporary era of the global ecological crisis; "The Island of the Fay" prefigures the modern Gaia hypothesis; and "The Domain of Arnheim" subverts the utilitarian and exploitative approach to the natural environment, stemming from one of the foundational American myths: the errand into the wilderness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]