Haunted Spaces in Twenty-First Century British Nature Writing

Anneke Lubkowitz

Published by De Gruyter 2020

Haunted Spaces in Twenty-First Century British Nature Writing

Anneke Lubkowitz

Volume 69 in the series Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110678611

Overview
Contents

About this book

This study investigates the figure of haunting in the New Nature Writing. It begins with a historical survey of nature writing and traces how it came to represent an ideal of ‘natural’ space as empty of human history and social conflict. Building on a theoretical framework which combines insights from ecocriticism and spatial theory, the author explores the spatial dimensions of haunting and ‘hauntology’ and shows how 21^st-century writers draw on a Gothic repertoire of seemingly supernatural occurrences and spectral imagery to portray ‘natural’ space as disturbed, uncanny and socially contested. Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlane are revealed to apply psychogeography’s interest in ‘hidden histories’ and haunted places to spaces associated with ‘wilderness’ and ‘the countryside’. Kathleen Jamie’s allusions to the Gothic are put in relation to her feminist re-writing of ‘the outdoors’, and John Burnside’s use of haunting is shown to dismantle fictions of ‘the far north’. This book provides not only a discussion of a wide range of factual and fictional narratives of the present but also an analysis of the intertextual dialogue with the Romantic tradition which enfolds in these texts.

Author / Editor information

Anneke Lubkowitz, Berlin, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Nature Writing noir Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Writing Nature: A Historical Survey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
2. Haunting Nature: Place, Space and Text Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3. The Spectropoetics of Walking: Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
4. De-Crypting the Gendered Outdoors with Kathleen Jamie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
5. Unweaving Fictions of the Far North with John Burnside Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
6. Many Voices? Broadening the Vision Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	286

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars (British Studies, Literary Studies), Libraries.
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 293
Keywords: Nature writing; haunting; 21st-century literature; space

eBook

Published: June 8, 2020
ISBN: 9783110678611

Hardcover

Published: May 18, 2020
ISBN: 9783110678598