C1 Refereed scientific book
Nature and Narrative: Rhetoric and Design in Contemporary Fiction
Authors: Lehtimäki, Markku
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: Routledge
Publication year: 2025
Journal name in source: Nature and Narrative: Rhetoric and Design in Contemporary Fiction
Series title: Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
Number in series: 179
First page : 1
Last page: 258
ISBN: 978-1-032-99695-0
eISBN: 978-1-003-60551-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003605515
Web address : https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003605515
Abstract
The book explores environmental issues in twenty-first-century Anglophone fiction and how those issues are dealt with by specific literary means. It proposes a reciprocal relationship between nature and narrative—the idea according to which nature both informs and inspires artistic creations, while literary designs and rhetoric also shape our ideas and perceptions of the natural environment. It is argued that in order to address design and rhetoric in environmental texts, we need a close analysis of those world-shaping functions of literary narratives that unite ecocritical and narratological interests. The author presents readings of contemporary novels and their varying ways of seeing nature through narrative devices and fictional minds. The novels discussed in the book are Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Ian McGuire’s The North Water, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, Paul Harding’s Tinkers and Enon, J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, Ian McEwan’s Solar, and Jenny Offill’s Weather.
The book explores environmental issues in twenty-first-century Anglophone fiction and how those issues are dealt with by specific literary means. It proposes a reciprocal relationship between nature and narrative—the idea according to which nature both informs and inspires artistic creations, while literary designs and rhetoric also shape our ideas and perceptions of the natural environment. It is argued that in order to address design and rhetoric in environmental texts, we need a close analysis of those world-shaping functions of literary narratives that unite ecocritical and narratological interests. The author presents readings of contemporary novels and their varying ways of seeing nature through narrative devices and fictional minds. The novels discussed in the book are Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Ian McGuire’s The North Water, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, Paul Harding’s Tinkers and Enon, J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, Ian McEwan’s Solar, and Jenny Offill’s Weather.
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