Elemental Ecocriticism : Thinking with Earth Air Water and Fire For centuries it was believed that all matter was composed of four elements: earth air water and fire in promiscuous combination bound by love and pulled apart by strife. Elemental theory offered a mode of understanding materiality that did not center the cosmos around the human. Outgrown as a science the elements are now what we build our houses against. Their renunciation has fostered only estrangement from the material world.The essays collected in Elemental Ecocriticism show how elemental materiality precipitates new engagements with the ecological. Here the classical elements reveal the vitality of supposedly inert substances (mud water earth air) chemical processes (fire) and natural phenomena as well as the promise in the abandoned and the unreal (ether phlogiston spontaneous generation).Decentering the human this volume provides important correctives to the idea of the material world as mere resource. Three response essays meditate on the connections of this collaborative project to the framing of modern day ecological concerns. A renewed intimacy with the elemental holds the potential of a more dynamic environmental ethics and the possibility of a reinvigorated materialism. Cover Contents Introduction Eleven Principles of the Elements One: Pyromena Fires Doing Two: Phlogiston Three: Airy Something Four: The Sea Above Five: Muddy Thinking Six: The Quintessence of Wit Seven: Wet Eight: Creeping Things Spontaneous Generation and Material Creativity Nine: Earths Prospects LOVE AND STRIFE Response Essays Elementality Elemental Relations at the Edge Elemental Love in the Anthropocene Coda: Wandering Elements and Natures to Come Acknowledgments Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z.