An archipelagic literature: re-framing ‘The New Nature Writing’

Abstract

This paper proposes a reconsideration of ‘The New Nature Writing’ as an archipelagic literature, a literature concerned with the diverse and distinctive cultures of Britain and Ireland as much as with its nature. It interrogates the term ‘nature writing’ as applied to this recent literary movement and outlines some differences between this and ‘place writing’. It also traces the influence of archipelagic criticism on this recent movement, exploring some common ground between devolutionary and environmental politics. Finally, it proposes that the archipelagic perspective offers a potentially quite useful means of thinking through some recent debates around the status of place in a modern, global environment

Experiencing nature with sight impairment: Seeking freedom from ableism

“…The idea of nature as freedom has long captured the human imagination (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998), particularly since the Romantic era when notions of escapism were underpinned by the idealisation and externalisation of nature (Stenning and Gifford, 2013). Such notions were characterised by a desire to escape the ‘sensual constraints’ of the city (Edensor, 2000), ‘stepping out’ of the ‘human’ world in search of the ‘Picturesque’ or the ‘Sublime’ (Smith, 2013). The idealisation of freedom in nature persists in much research examining the contribution of nature to human health and wellbeing (Conradson, 2005; Özgüner and Kendle, 2006; Smaldone et al., 2005).…”

Sandscapes

“…In an article examining the "new nature writing", Jos Smith argues that most archipelagic reimaginings have focused on "a decidedly Celtic fringe and a perhaps more-than-partially devolved cultural geography". 4 In thinking archipelagically, the most popular and influential creative non-fiction writers-from Robert Macfarlane to Kathleen Jamie to Tim Robinson-have gravitated to the north and the west. To apply Kerrigan's literary critical thinking, then, Hayling's geographical location within the archipelago means that it is inextricably implicated within the paradigm of Anglocentrism-centred, of course, in the capital-that ought to be questioned and stripped away by twenty-first-century place writers and literary geographers.…”

Contemporary British place writing

“…Feeding off this wider cultural context, this chapter's principal interest is the term 'place writing' itself: a collocation that has increasingly entered creative and critical literary discourse (Smith, 2013); but a label that has yet to receive substantial scholarly scrutiny. Immediately, critical questions proliferate.…”