From Religious Nostalgia to Eco-Postsecularism

Scriptures for Climate-Changed Futures in Fictions by Richard Jefferies, Will Self, and Octavia Butler

Authors

  • Magdalena Mączyńska Marymount Manhattan College

Abstract

This paper offers an eco-postsecular reading of Octavia Butler’s two-part Parable series (1993-1998) and Will Self ’s Book of Dave (2006), alongside a Victorian predecessor of contemporary climate fiction: Richard Jefferies’s After London; or, Wild England (1885). The futuristic visions of Jefferies, Self, and Butler illustrate the exceptional explanatory and affective power of sacred texts, and reflect on the benefits and hazards of reading, re-reading, and un-reading religious scriptures under conditions of climate pressure.

Author Biography

  • Magdalena Mączyńska, Marymount Manhattan College

    Magdalena Mączyńska is an Associate Professor of English and World Literatures at Marymount Manhattan College, and author of The Gospel According to the Novelist: Religious Scripture and Contemporary Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2015).

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 32 No. 1 (2019): Religion and Secularism

Section

Main Section

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Mączyńska, M. (2026). From Religious Nostalgia to Eco-Postsecularism: Scriptures for Climate-Changed Futures in Fictions by Richard Jefferies, Will Self, and Octavia Butler. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 32(1), 11-26. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27289