Steven Swarbrick, The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton.

Steven Swarbrick's book, "The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton," explores the intersection of Lacanian theory and ecological criticism in early modern British poetry. Swarbrick challenges sentimental notions of pure Nature and critiques the dominant theoretical framework of New Materialism. He argues that matter has a semiotic excess and that the poets he examines, such as Spenser, Ralegh, Marvell, and Milton, shape their poems around unsatisfying objects. Swarbrick also delves into the concept of the ecological subject and its relation to the Lacanian sinthome. While the book includes some attempts to bridge different intellectual perspectives and address issues of canonicity and decolonization, these aspects are seen as distractions from the main focus of the book. [Extracted from the article]