From Nazi attempts at "naturalizing" the state of warfare to modern marketers' penchant for associating products with the "purity" and "simplicity" of nature, individuals and groups have tried to link their actions, products, or ideologies with the natural world. To find a parallel in the natural world (or, at least, to convince an audience that such a parallel exists) is highly advantageous for, as Neil Evernden has argued, "Once we can say, and believe, that a thing is natural, it is beyond reproach: it is now in the realm of the absolute. "1 Evernden goes on to assert: "Attributing to any notion a connection with nature provides 'an immediate certificate of legitimacy; its credentials need not be further scrutinized. '"2 In this "certificate of legitimacy" lies the appeal for everyone from vegetarians to carnivores, and from homophobes to gay rights activists, to find a counterpart in the animal and vegetable realms for their beliefs regarding proper human behavior. Disciplines
In the Alliterative Morte Arthure , the forest is often depicted as an ideal place for ambushing one's enemy. Such persistent attacks lead many warriors in the poem to encounter densely wooded areas with trepidation and even at times with explicit violence towards these places. However, through its use of several arresting locus amoenus passages, the Morte demonstrates alternative ways for soldiers to experience natural landscapes. Rather than suggest that forests are inherently malicious and forbidding places (as many medieval romances have done), the poem suggests that when cleared of an immediate threat of ambush, natural landscapes can be restorative and intoxicating spaces for soldiers.
This final chapter focuses on one of the most recent and most popular trends happening right now in science fiction, the rise of a decidedly nostalgic form of science fiction. In particular, the trend examined in this chapter is one called ‘1980s-nostalgia science fiction’ and is made up of science fiction literary and screen texts from c. 2010-present that exhibit a profound fondness for or interest in the American 1980s. The three nostalgia texts that comprise the focus of this chapter are Super 8, Stranger Things, and Paper Girls. After first discussing what is one of the most influential texts for this 1980s-nostalgia science fiction – Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial – this chapter then analyzes how these nostalgia texts align themselves with Spielberg’s blockbuster film by demonizing motorized transport while simultaneously exalting the bicycle.
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