Haunted Spaces in Twenty-First Century British Nature Writing

With the turn of the twenty-first century, a group of writers began rehabilitating British nature writing and the voice of the individual interacting with it, producing what has become collectively known as the new nature writing. This examination considers how this literature represents a post-secular re-conceptualization of our relationship to nature. The new nature writing challenges a key element of the secular social imaginary, namely the subject-centered, immanence-bound, disenchanted representation of nature, which sets the self over and above nature, destabilizing existing dichotomies, and generating a multiplicity of hybridized possibilities that re-conceptualize our relationship to nature.

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New British Nature Writing

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.155 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Deborah Lilley

Keyword(s):

Nature Writing ◽

First Century ◽

Environmental Crisis ◽

New Approaches ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Industrial Landscapes

This chapter explores the emergence of “new British nature writing” in the twenty-first century and identifies new approaches to its subject and form produced in response to the scale of harm registered by the growing awareness of environmental crisis. It interrogates the notion of “new” nature writing and the ways that it has been received, considering its continuities and breaks with the legacies of the tradition in Britain alongside ecocritical arguments concerning the concept and representation of nature and human–nonhuman relations. The chapter examines defining characteristics of the form— interest in urban, suburban, and industrial landscapes; attention to spatial and temporal intersections of people and place; a re-evaluation of ideas such as “natural” and “wild”; and a critical self-consciousness regarding the representation of nature — in key works by writers including Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie, Helen Macdonald, Roger Deakin, and Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts.

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Transient Dwelling in German-language Nature Essay Writing: W.G. Sebald’s Die Alpen im Meer and Peter Handke’s Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire // Pertenencia temporal en el ensayo sobre la naturaleza en alemán

Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment ◽

10.37536/ecozona.2015.6.1.636 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 25-42

Author(s):

Simone Schröder

Keyword(s):

Sense Of Belonging ◽

Nature Writing ◽

Specific Region ◽

First Century ◽

German Language ◽

Peter Handke ◽

Essay Writing ◽

The Alps ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Special Case

Identity, place, and a sense of belonging to a specific region are factors which have shaped most twentieth and twenty-first century nature writing throughout Europe. This article argues that German-language nature writing is, however, a special case. Due to the appropriation of the aforementioned concepts in the Nazis’ Blood and Soil doctrine, relations to a national landscape have become problematic for most post-Shoah generation writers. Born into a nation for which belonging and Heimat once were used as a means to justify the genocide of non-Aryan groups, access to an innocent, identificatory approach to nature is cut off. It is therefore no coincidence that both W.G. Sebald in The Alps in the Sea and Peter Handke in Lesson of Montagne Sainte-Victoire turn towards foreign landscape. Instead of pondering upon a specific German or Austrian region they belong to, they describe walks through Corsica and France. By linking their experience of these surroundings to other regions, to history and art, they create a truly European panorama and establish an aesthetics of transient dwelling. The form of the literary essay for which digressions, lengthy contemplations and sudden changes of discourse are typical enables them to combine a set of different perspectives on nature. Besides, the essay’s meandering form matches their struggle with an identity rooted in a specific soil. And still, a sense of loss, represented in the guise of an expulsion metanarrative, pervades. Resumen Identidad, lugar y el sentimiento de pertenencia a una región específica son factores que han caracterizado la mayor parte de la escritura de la naturaleza de los siglos XX y XXI en toda Europa. Este artículo razona que la escritura de la naturaleza en lengua alemana es no obstante un caso especial. A causa de la apropiación de los conceptos anteriormente mencionados por parte de los nazis en su doctrina de Sangre y Suelo, las relaciones con el paisaje nacional se volvieron problemáticas para la mayoría de la generación post-Shoah de escritores. Siendo natural de una nación que antes utilizaba conceptos como pertenencia y Heimat para justificar el genocidio de grupos no-arios, ya no existen posiciones inocentes e identificatorias hacia la naturaleza. Por eso no es casualidad que tanto W.G. Sebald en Los Alpes en el mar y Peter Handke en La doctrina del Sainte-Victoire se centren en paisajes extranjeros. En vez de ocuparse de una región específica de Alemania o Austria, a las que pertenecen, describen excursiones por Córcega y Francia. Asociando sus experiencias en esta naturaleza con otras regiones, con la historia y el arte, establecen un panorama verdaderamente europeo y crean una estética de pertenencia temporal. La forma del ensayo literario en el que las digresiones, las contemplaciones extensas y los cambios discursivos súbitos son típicos, les permite combinar una serie de perspectivas distintitas sobre la naturaleza. Además, las divagaciones del ensayo se corresponden con las dificultades de los autores a la hora de luchan con una identidad enraizada en un suelo especifico. Y aun así se difunde un sentido de perdida, representado en forma de metanarración de expulsión.

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