Kathleen Jamie and Robert MacFarlane

the new nature writing

http://www.granta.com/New-

Writing/Video-Ghost-Species

The pastoral wont do

the new nature writing

Anti-pastoral/Anti-lyric: what might be called old nature writing by which I mean the lyrical pastoral tradition of the romantic wanderer Formal Innovation: The best new nature writing is also an experiment in forms: the eld report, the essay, the memoir, the travelogue Immersion in Environment: the writer [must] be present in the story Local/Global: concerned with the local or the parochial: they are about the discovery of exoticism in the familiar, the extraordinary in the ordinary A New Aesthetic?: new ways of seeing Elegy and Loss: we know how our world is changing and what is being lost and yet we are powerless to prevent the change Subject/Object: Overcoming the perceived divide between human to nature. We must be present, not only as observers, but as intrinsic elements [] it is the tradition of the false notion of separation that has caused us so many problems and led to so much environmental degradation. [The] great challenge in the twenty-rst century to remake the connection. I think our lives depend on it.

From the Editors Letter by Jason Cowley Granta 102: The New Nature Writing (2008)

What is pastoral?

Literary mode that reaches back to classical antiquity (Hesiods Works and Days, Theocrituss Idylls, Virgils Eclogues and Georgics). idyllic landscape (Eclogues), innocence, Golden Age, Arcadia, prelapserian, song, bucolic, shepherds, working rural life (Georgics), country vs. city, art vs. nature.

Key Texts:

William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935) (Exeter library) Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1973)

Paul Alpers, What is Pastoral? (1996)

Terry Gifford, Pastoral (London: Routledge, 1999)

Classical Pastoral: Golden Age & Rural Idyll

(ll. 109-120) First of all the deathless gods who dwell on

Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods. Evelyn-White [1914] http://www.sacredtexts.com/cla/hesiod/works.htm

Hesiod: Works And Days, c. 700 BC trans. by Hugh G.

Iron Age: (ll. 170-201) Thereafter, would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterwards. For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them. But, notwithstanding, even these shall have some good mingled with their evils. (ll. 225-237) But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to the men of the land, and go not aside from what is just, their city flourishes, and the people prosper in it: Peace, the nurse of children, is abroad in their land, and all-seeing Zeus never decrees cruel war against them. Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but light-heartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit.

Classical Pastoral: Iron Age & Rustic Labour

Classical Pastoral: Theocritus & literary pastoral

Tis said, dear Lycidas, answered I, you beat all comers, herdsman or harvester, at the pipe. So tis said, and right glad am I it should be said; howbeit to my thinking Im as good a man as you. This our journey is to a harvest-home; some friends of ours make holyday to the fair-robed Demeter with first-fruits of their increase, because the Goddess hath filled their threshing-floor in measure so full and fat. So come, I pray you, since the way and the day be yours as well as ours, and let you and me make country-music. And each from the other may well take some profit, seeing I, like you, am a clear-voiced mouthpiece of the Muses, and, like you, am accounted best of musicians everywhere

Idyll VII The Harvest Home

Classical Pastoral: Representation

Theocritus pastorals are representations of the

speech acts of herdsmen, their conversations and songs. To ignore the part played by transformation in giving these speech acts literary form is to miss something even more fundamental to pastoral than to other genres, the tension between what is being represented and the act of representation.

Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, Theocritus Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre. (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 5.

Classical Pastoral: Virgil, Eclogue I

Meliboeus.

You, Tityrus, 'neath a broad beech-canopy Reclining, on the slender oat rehearse Your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields, And home's familiar bounds, even now depart. Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you Sit careless in the shade, and, at your call, "Fair Amaryllis" bid the woods resound.

http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.1.i.html

From Classical to Renaissance Pastoral

In classical pastoral, the idealised world exists in a productive tension with less idealised conditions:

summer with winter

pleasure with loss harvest with labour

singing with a journey

past or future with a present

In Renaissance pastoral (Williams argues) these living tensions are excised and we find ourselves less in a living than an enamelled and thoroughly idealised world (18).

Ben Jonson, To Penshurst (1616)

The painted partridge lies in every field, And for thy mess is willing to be killed. And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish, Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish, Fat aged carps that run into thy net [] The blushing apricot and woolly peach Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach. And though thy walls be of the country stone, Theyre reared with no mans ruin, no mans groan; Theres none that dwell about them wish them down; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make The better cheeses bring them, or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands[]

Nicholas Poussin, Et in Arcadia ego (1637) Death intrudes on the pastoral

A Pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd; the form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrative, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic: The thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion, but that short and flowing: The expression humble, yet as pure as the language will afford; neat, but not florid; easy, and yet lively. In short, the fable, manners, thoughts, and expressions are full of the greatest simplicity in nature.[] If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceiv'd then to have been; when a notion of quality was annex'd to that name, and the best of men follow'd the employment. [] But with a respect to the present age, nothing more conduces to make these composures natural, than when some Knowledge in rural affairs is discover'd. This may be made to appear rather done by chance than on design, and sometimes is best shewn by inference; lest by too much study to seem natural, we destroy the delight. For what is inviting in this sort of poetry (as Fontenelle observes) proceeds not so much from the Idea of a country life itself, as from that of is Tranquillity. We must therefore use some illusion to render a Pastoral delightful; and this consists in exposing the best side only of a shepherd's life, and in concealing its miseries. Alexander Pope, A Discourse on Pastoral Poetry (1704) http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=33904

The essential trick of the old pastoral, which was felt to imply a beautiful relation between rich and poor, was to make simple people express strong feelings (felt as the most universal subject, something fundamentally true about everybody) in learned and fashioned language William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), p. 11. It is this (in some sense conscious) clash between different modes of feeling which is the normal source of pleasure in pastoral. Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), p.114

A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags, A rude and natural causeway, interposed Between the water and a winding slope Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy: And there myself and two belovd Friends, One calm September morning, ere the mist Had altogether yielded to the sun, Sauntered on this retired and difficult way. Ill suits the road with one in haste; but we Played with our time; and, as we strolled along, It was our occupation to observe Such objects as the waves had tossed ashore Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, Each on the other heaped, along the line Of the dry wreck. [] So fared we that bright morning: from the fields, Meanwhile, a noise was heard, the busy mirth Of reapers, men and women, boys and girls. Delighted much to listen to those sounds, And feeding thus our fancies, we advanced Along the indented shore; when suddenly, Through a thin veil of glittering haze was seen Before us, on a point of jutting land, The tall and upright figure of a Man Attired in peasant's garb, who stood alone, Angling beside the margin of the lake. "Improvident and reckless," we exclaimed, "The Man must be, who thus can lose a day Of the mid harvest, when the labourer's hire Is ample, and some little might be stored Wherewith to cheer him in the winter time."

Thus talking of that Peasant, we approached Close to the spot where with his rod and line He stood alone; whereat he turned his head To greet usand we saw a Man worn down By sickness, gaunt and lean, with sunken cheeks And wasted limbs, his legs so long and lean That for my single self I looked at them, Forgetful of the body they sustained. Too weak to labour in the harvest field, The Man was using his best skill to gain A pittance from the dead unfeeling lake That knew not of his wants. I will not say What thoughts immediately were ours, nor how The happy idleness of that sweet morn, With all its lovely images, was changed To serious musing and to self-reproach. Nor did we fail to see within ourselves What need there is to be reserved in speech, And temper all our thoughts with charity. Therefore, unwilling to forget that day, My Friend, Myself, and She who then received The same admonishment, have called the place By a memorial name, uncouth indeed As e'er by mariner was given to bay Or foreland, on a new-discovered coast; And Point Rash-Judgment is the name it bears.

William Wordsworth Poems on the Naming of Places IV Lyrical Ballads (1800)

6 Characteristics of Post-Pastoral
Post-Pastoral (not post as in after)

an awe in attention to the natural world

recognition of a creative-destructive universe equally in balance (death and rebirth growth and decay) recognition that our inner nature can be understood in relation to external nature awareness of both nature as culture and culture as nature recognition that with consciousness comes conscience

realisation that the exploitation of the planet is of the same mind-set as [social] exploitation

Terry Gifford, Pastoral, 152-3

Nature is like that other Romantic-period invention, the aesthetic. The damage done [by modern society], goes the argument, has sundered subjects from objects, so that human beings are forlornly alienated from their world. Contact with nature, and with the aesthetic, will mend the broken bridge between subject and object. [] Subject and object require a certain environment in which they can join up together. Thus is born the special realms of art and nature, the new secular churches in which subject and object can be remarried. Timothy Morton Ecology Without Nature 23

Is it Anti-pastoral/Anti-lyric: how far does it conform to pastoral concerns? Formal Innovation: why does the new nature writing favour documentary forms? Immersion in Environment: can immersion heal the ostensible rift between human and nature? Local/Global: how are these texts concerned with the local, global, domestic, wilderness spaces, and to what end? A New Aesthetic? what claims are made in these texts about new ways of seeing landscape? Elegy and Loss: how do these texts reenact pastoral elegy or loss? Subject/Object: how do these texts negotiate the relationship between non-human/human, nature/culture, nature/artifice? Do they reaffirm the problem that they attempt to resolve?

Questions to ask of the new nature writing

Wilderness
Oelschlager notes that the C19th marked the beginning of an important change in the meaning of the idea of wilderness. Wild nature was no longer viewed as merely a valuable resource (as a means to economic ends) and obstacle (wilderness must be conquered for civilization to advance). A new conception arose which saw wilderness as an end in its own right and an endangered species in need of preservation. This changing idea of wilderness, so vigorously set in motion by Thoreau and Muir and exhibited in the creation of national parks and organisations dedicated to the protection of wilderness, is still evolving today. Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. Yale University Press, 1991.

Wilderness as Romantic Consumerism

Wildernesses embody both soft, shallow Romanticism a provisional getaway from the mechanical or total administered hurly-burly and in deep terms, a radical alternative. Wilderness is a fusion of Puritan utopianism about the immanence of God in newly settled America and the lineage of pantheism running through such writers as Wordsworth and Emerson. Wilderness therefore expresses various kinds of negative: fingers wagging, strongly or weakly, at modern society. To the extent that wilderness space and the laws that created them persist, we are still living, literally, within the Romantic period. It is strange to discover a secret passage between bottles of detergent and mountain ranges. But there is one, and it is called Romantic consumerism. Morton 114.

Wilderness as Empty Space

Empty space space that capitalism has left relatively undeveloped is intrinsic to capitalism, since the laws of capitalism may dictate that a vacant lot is more profitable over a certain span of time than one that has been developed. Plot [ergo Wilderness] is a potential space, a limbo waiting to generate value. As Marx puts it, in a pithy sentence that accounts for pastoral poetry and even nature writing an ecocriticism: First the labourers are driven from the land, and then the sheep arrive. Capitalism modernizes agricultural space. The way the land appears unoccupied is not a relic of an ancient prehistoric past, but a function of modernity [] (Morton 86)