Preface

Summary

This book is addressed primarily to readers who are new to the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. In particular, I hope it finds readers who are interested in recent debates about the status of “the human” and who might wish to learn something about what Jeffers can offer these ongoing conversations. I make the case in this book that Jeffers is an essential precursor for contemporary discussions about inhumanism and that his radical non-anthropocentrism remains deeply relevant for work being done in the environmental humanities, environmental philosophy, animal studies, and related fields.

Advanced scholars in Jeffers studies who find their way to this work will encounter much that is familiar but a few new themes and ideas as well. With my focus on inhumanism, I am not trying of course to break new ground. This is a central—perhaps the central—philosophical and spiritual concern of Jeffers's work, and many scholars before me have examined it. So, too, many of the poems I discuss in this book have been expertly analyzed by previous and present generations of literary critics, and I am much indebted to their scholarship. At the same time, the heavy emphasis I give to the philosophical and theoretical dimensions of Jeffers's work cuts against the grain of some of the existing scholarship, and specialists will readily note the ways in which I push back against certain established readings of Jeffers. Scholars will, I hope, also appreciate how my approach to understanding philosophy as a way of life (as opposed to, say, a mode of discourse focused primarily on making arguments and defending metaphysical and epistemological theses) allows the philosophical dimensions of Jeffers's work to be differently illuminated.

Given that this book is primarily intended for the former (general and non-specialist) audience rather than the latter (scholarly and specialist), I have avoided cluttering the main body of the work with discussions of the secondary scholarship. I have instead provided footnotes in various places pointing readers to secondary works that have proved useful for my own analyses. I have also included “Suggestions for Further Reading” at the end of the book for readers who wish to delve further into Jeffers's poetry and the substantial body of scholarship on his work.