NAN SHEPHERD’S THE LIVING MOUNTAIN (1977): A FORERUNNER OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BRITISH NATURE WRITING
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Tarih
2021
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info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Özet
Nan Shepherd (1893- 1981), a Scottish author and nature lover, entered the literaryscene with her novels Quary Wood (1928), The Weatherhouse (1930) and A Pass inthe Grampians (1933) that focused on the effects of modernity on Scottish rural lifeand contributed to the intellectual movement known as Scottish renaissance.However, it is because of her 1977 memoir, The Living Mountain that she has gainedpopularity in recent years. In this mountain memoir, Shepherd shares her impressionsabout the years she spent hiking in the Cairngorms, a national park in Scotland. TheLiving Mountain can be seen as a pioneering work for its age due to Shepherd’s deepinterest in the non-human animals as well as the natural elements in the mountainrange, her narrative which is not centred on a human but shaped around the nonhuman, her sensitivity to anthropogenic ecological problems and the importance sheattached to writing about her bodily sensations and emotions as well as objectiveobservations during her hikes. The purpose of this study is to analyse The LivingMountain considering Shepherd’s alleged non-anthropocentrism, ecologicalsensitivity and amalgamation of subjective response with objective observations. Thisstudy claims that Shepherd’s memoir can be read as a forerunner of twenty-firstcentury nature writing, which some ecocritics like Jason Cowley and Alexander J. B.Hampton prefer to call as “new nature writing”. Twenty-first century nature writingin Britain is supposedly marked by writers’ ecological awareness, their efforts tocreate non-anthropocentric narratives and the importance they attach to theirsubjective experiences in nature in addition to objective observations. This paperdiscusses how Shepherd managed to integrate these characteristics into her writing,which can inspire and guide the new generation writers as they tend to show a nonanthropocentric reaction to the current ecological crisis in their own ways.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
twenty-first century nature writing, British nature writing, Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Kaynak
Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi
WoS Q Değeri
Scopus Q Değeri
Cilt
8
Sayı
1
