Call for Book Chapters

The Plant Turn: Literature, Ecology, and the Green Imagination Across Periods

“Under Strong Interest” by Bloomsbury Academic's Critical Plant Studies

Editor’s Introduction

Plants are fundamental to human existence. They sustain us as food, clothe us in their fibers, shelter us in the form of wood and other materials, and provide us with medicines, cosmetics, and ornaments. They also permeate our symbolic and imaginative worlds. Human and plant life are spatially entangled, since both thrive within overlapping climates and ecosystems. Indeed, plants have shaped not only human culture but also the very evolution of the human body.

Yet, despite this intimate interconnection, plants occupy a surprisingly marginal place in the cultural canon of the modern West. Unlike animals, which abound in myths, fables, and literature as characters, subjects, and metaphors, plants are often relegated to the background, functioning as scenery rather than as central figures. This absence is all the more striking given how deeply interwoven vegetal and human histories are. One might even argue that the study of plants is inseparable from the study of humanity itself.

This volume seeks to redress that imbalance by exploring literary representations of plants across historical periods, with a particular focus on the contemporary moment and the legacies of Western modernity. Modernity’s distinctive—often exploitative—relationship to the natural world has been instrumental in shaping today’s ecological crisis. By tracing the “Plant Turn” in literature from the Medieval period through the Renaissance, the Victorian era, modernism, postwar culture, and contemporary writing, the collection illuminates the evolving role of plants in the cultural imagination.

Organized by period, each chapter grounds its analysis in one or two key works (novels, poems, or plays), offering readers both a historical framework and close readings of major texts. The Plant Turn argues that attending to plants in literature is not a novelty but part of a long cultural history now made urgent by the Anthropocene. By tracing the shifting symbolic, material, and ecological roles of plants across Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, Modernist, Postwar, and Contemporary writing, the volume shows how vegetal life has persistently shaped literary imagination, even when overlooked in critical discourse. At the same time, it underscores the necessity of revisiting these works today, when the environmental crisis demands renewed attention to the interdependence of human and plant life. While this proposal outlines a selection of representative texts, we remain open to alternative works and suggestions, ensuring flexibility and inclusivity in shaping the final contents of the volume. The edited volume will be published under a prestigious academic press, ensuring both the scholarly rigor and the wide visibility it deserves.

Please choose one of the topics listed below as the focus of your chapter. Proposals should clearly identify the selected work and your theoretical framework.

Tentative Table of Contents

Part I – Medieval Seeds

1. The Dream of the Rood (c. 8th century): The Tree as Sacred Mediator
2. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls (c. 1382): Gardens, Desire, and Arboreal Allegory
3. William Langland, Piers Plowman (c. 1370–90): Agriculture, Ethics, and the Moral Imagination

Part II – Renaissance Growth
4. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590–96): Gardens, Allegory, and Vegetal Virtue
5. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–96): Herbs, Magic, and the Ecology of Desire
6. John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667): Eden, Botany, and the Fall of Nature

Part III – Victorian Roots
7. Charles Darwin, The Power of Movement in Plants (1880) and Literary Echoes (accepted)
8. George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871–72): The Web of Life and Vegetal Ethics
9. Christina Rossetti’s Poetry (Goblin Market, 1862): Fruits, Desire, and Consumption (accepted)

Part IV – Modernist Branches
10. Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens (1919): Fragmentation and Plant Perspectives (accepted)
11. D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915): Vegetal Growth and Human Passion
12. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922): Dead Land, Failed Fertility, and Plant Symbolism

Part V – Postwar Ecologies
13. J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962): Tropical Overgrowth and Climate Futures
14. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems (1965): Botanical Imagery and Psychic Landscapes
15. Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990): Island Flora and Postcolonial Ecologies

Part VI – Contemporary Blossoms
16. Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018): Arboreal Narratives and Eco-Epic
17. Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021): Plants, Empire, and Extraction (accepted)
18. Anne Elvey, White on White (2022): Poetics of Plant Listening
19. Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009): Herbal Knowledge and Ethics
20. Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone (2016): Gardens and Catastrophe on Stage (accepted)
21. Joyelle McSweeney, Toxicon and Arachne (2020): Poisonous Flora and Toxic Aesthetics

Submission Details and Timeline

Please send a 300–500 word abstract describing the proposed chapter’s theory/framework, contributions, structure, a short list of provisional sources and a brief bio (100–150 words) to  theplantturn@gmail.com

The abstract submission deadline is November 30, 2025.

Submission of Complete Chapters (for selected abstracts): March 30, 2026.

Final chapters will be expected to be at least 6000 words (including references), in English, and referenced in MLA 9 style.

The book is expected to be published in late 2026 or early 2027, following peer review and editorial revisions.

All submissions will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process.

For inquiries and questions, please feel free to contact us at  theplantturn@gmail.com

The volume is currently under strong interest from Bloomsbury Academic’s Critical Plant Studies series.

Editor: Dr. Ercan Gürova, Ankara University, Turkey