A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book

Daily life and global crisis : Human experience and narrative fiction in the age of the Anthropocene




AuthorsLehtimäki Markku

EditorsDuffy Helena, Leppänen Katarina

Publishing placeNew York, NY

Publication year2024

Book title Storying the Ecocatastrophe : Contemporary Narratives about the Environmental Collapse

Series titleRoutledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment

First page 25

Last page44

Number of pages290

ISBN978-1-032-72694-6

eISBN978-1-032-72695-3

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.4324/9781032726953-2

Web address https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781032726953-2/daily-life-global-crisis-markku-lehtim%C3%A4ki


Abstract

Markku Lehtimäki’s chapter suggests that popular climate change novels such as Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) and Jenny Offill’s Weather (2020) are largely anthropomorphic narratives which deal with human concerns in the changing global environment. Especially interesting are the different ways in which Solar and Weather narrativise the experience of climate change. McEwan does this mainly through conventional character- and plot-centred narrativity, while Offill employs a collage-like fragmented narration. In the chapter, storyfication is problematised in the context of the environmental crisis because narrative is linked to human experientiality and fails to represent broad timescales and non-human agencies. Both Solar and Weather suggest that global climate change is something too large-scale, too complex, and too abstract to be grasped by individual human beings. It is therefore mainly through fictional narratives that climate change can be felt both ethically and emotionally.



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 11:24