Abstract
Bracke traces the depiction of nature in Crace’s novels through the lens of ecocriticism (The Gift of Stones, 1988; Signals of Distress, 1994; and Being Dead, 1999), exploring two developments in ecocriticism: a concern with the global and the development of econarratology. Early ecocriticism emphasized (non-fictional) realism and was indebted to the pastoral and skeptical of the contemporary (British) novel. Gradually, via engagement with science fiction and depictions of terra forming and awareness beyond the local, more recent ecocriticism has explored a wider variety, including contemporary British novels. These developments are paralleled in Crace’s novels, from the emphasis on pastoral, to engagements with the global (Signals of Distress and The Gift of Stones) and a concern with new materialism and non-human narration in Being Dead.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
See Bracke 2014 for a further discussion of early ecocriticism’s issues with the novel.
- 4.
Lawrence Buell’s exploration of the different ‘waves’ in ecocriticism provides an overview of early ecocriticism’s focus, as well as how the field has developed (Buell 2011).
- 5.
Goodbody and Rigby modify the traditional view of ecocriticism as ‘atheoretical’ somewhat. They point to the work of Patrick Murphy and SueEllen Campbell as examples of early ecocritical engagements with Bakhtinian dialogics and poststructuralism, respectively. Moreover, they point out that ‘the charge of ecocritical theory-phobia fails to recognise the theoretical moment that is implicit in the admittedly widespread rejection of the then dominant mode of critical or cultural theory by most first-wave ecocritics’ (Goodbody and Rigby 2011, 1).
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For an exploration of urban nature and Arctic nature, see Bracke 2018.
- 8.
See Trexler 2015, 17–18 for an overview of ecocritical work since 2007 that has addressed climate crisis.
- 9.
I explore this issue in depth in chapter one of Bracke 2018.
- 10.
‘What aesthetic forms might be most appropriate for articulating such a [deterritorialised environmental] vision by proposing that allegories of the global have given way, in the most innovative works of literature and art, to forms that deploy allegory in larger formal frameworks of dynamic and interactive collage or montage’ (Heise 2008, 10 ).
- 11.
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- 13.
Lawrence Buell critiques such depictions for being ‘easily dismissible for their combination of recycling overly familiar “empty landscape” tropes and remoteness from the quotidian’ (Buell 2016, 11).
- 14.
As Greg Garrard describes it, ‘[t]he fate of the Eiffel Tower, especially, preoccupies the documentary makers. … Life After People in particular remains preoccupied with technological structures such as bridges, dams and skyscrapers, combining CGI-stimulated time-lapse and Crime Scene Investigation-style forensic zooms that show us their point of maximum vulnerability’ (Garrard 2012, 52).
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- 16.
William Nelles points out that non-human narration and focalization are often easier to achieve in visual media. In the cartoon series The Simpsons, for instance, ‘scenes viewed through the dog’s eyes can be shown in black and white’ (Nelles 2001, 188).
- 17.
Much of the scholarship on non-human narration can also be applied to the instances of non-human focalization I am concerned with.
- 18.
This is precisely the dynamics that Bernaerts et al. identify (2014).
- 19.
When ‘butting in’, Herman suggests, ‘a speaker voices an utterance of which he or she is not only author but also the principal, whereas when chipping in a speaker voices an utterance in which the spoken-for-party or parties function as co-principal(s)’ (Herman 2016, 2).
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Bracke, A. (2018). 3 Ecocriticism and Jim Crace’s Early Novels. In: Shaw, K., Aughterson, K. (eds) Jim Crace. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94093-9_4
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