Nature in the Contemporary American NovelPatrick D. MurphyUniversity of Central Florida

1960s and 1970s

Nature Writing as American Starting

Point• Nature Writing was being defined by its teachers

as a type of nonfictional prose focused on "natural history and experiences in nature" –Thomas J. Lyon

• Even as professors and critics were achieving success in teaching these new courses, they were finding themselves unable to limit their selection of texts to "nonfiction" and to portraits of direct "experience."

• Nature writing takes the emphasis away from history and geology and places it squarely on the impact of nature on human individuals and human societies, and, in turn, their impact on nature.

The Two JohnsJohn Muir

John Burroughs

James Fenimore Cooper

The Deerslayer The Last of the Mohicans

Fictional Nature LiteratureHerman

MelvilleSara Orne

Jewett

Mary AustinThe Land of Little Rain The Ford

“Environmental” literature

• presumes a high degree of self-consciousness about ecological relationships and environmental crises. While examples of environmental literature can be found at any point in time when writers have become concerned about the negative impact of their culture or nation on the natural world they inhabit, it is much more of a contemporary phenomenon than nature literature because of the widespread recognition of global environmental crises.

American Feminism

Abigail Adams Sencea Falls 1848

Women Writers• Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours, for example, was a national bestseller.

Other 19th Century Women Writers

•Helen Hunt Jackson•Rebecca Harding Davis•Mary Hallock Foote•Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Again in the 1960s

• In the U.S. the third wave of feminism arose alongside of, and as a part of, the Civil Rights movement and later the anti-war movement, and developed ahead of but largely separate from environmentalism.

Ecofeminismecofeminism is more focused on the future. Unlike what are known as liberal feminists, ecofeminists do not want women to have equality of opportunity to destroy species of animals, to pollute the atmosphere, or to contribute to global warming. Rather, they believe that alleviating women’s oppression is part of a larger project of transforming human relationships with the rest of nature.

Focus on the Future

The ecofeminist focus on the future is predicated upon the belief in human agency such that we can act in the world and effect cultural, political, and economic changes. Such changes will in turn open up a different set of possibilities for ways of living in the future than are currently available in the configurations of global capitalism, homogenizing industrialization, and metropolitan cultural oppression of colonial and formerly colonial countries and indigenous peoples.

Extension of Agency• Usually, when humans ask "what good is it," they

really mean "what good is it to me or to my society?"

• Ecocriticism and ecofeminism point out that the questions need to be framed as "what good is it within its ecosystem, and what is the relationship of humans to the maintenance or degradation of that good within that system?"

• Using the health of the ecosystem as the fundamental criterion for judgment enables the recognition of diversity as a necessary dimension of individual species and ecosystem survival, with cultural diversity as one of the dimensions that enhances the survival of the human species.

Ethnic American Novelists

Scott MomadayLeslie Marmon Silko

Linda Hogan Ana Castillo

Alice WalkerLouis Owens

Various Senses of Nature and Place

Attention to the multicultural and multiethnic dimensions of nature writing and environmental literature is one way of expanding our understanding of literary representations of human-nature interaction. That will help readers and critics to understand the ways in which different segments of the American population articulate their sense of place, of inhabitation, and of identification with the world around them.

Contemporary Novels 1970 to

Presentone) historical and realist novels

two) postmodern and magic realist novels

three) mystery and detective novels

four) science fiction and fantasy novels.

Historical Novels• Marly Youmans's Catherwood, set in

the colonial period, • William Haywood Henderson's post-

Civil War novel, The Rest of the Earth, • Brenda Peterson's Depression era

River of Light, • Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit about

Native Americans during the Oklahoma oil boom of the 1920s, and

• frontier novels by such authors as Molly Gloss, The Jump-off Creek

• And Susan Lang, Small Rocks Rising

Key Issues with Historical Novels

One, are they based in nostalgia and romantically recreate the period to serve eutopian ideals

Two, do they attempt to rewrite official or popular history to assess more accurately contradictory characteristics of human-environment interactions

Three, do they share similar thematic impulses and emphases or employ different environmental and ethical positions.

Realist NovelsWendell Berry's The Memory of Old Jack, A Place on Earth, and Remembering

Frank Bergon's Wild GameStephen Goodwin's The Blood of Paradise

Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer and Animal Dreams

Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats

AgribusinessCarcinogensMutagenic syntheticsFoodchain implicates everyone in Environmental health

Postmodern and Magic Realist

• Karen Tei Yamashita's, Through the Arc of the Rainforest and Tropic of Orange, • Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, • Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, • John Nichols's The Milagro Beanfield War, • Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, • Toni Morrison's Paradise

Linda Hogan, Solar Storms

Environmental justice

Destruction of CanadianFirst Nation lands

HydroQuebecJames Bay Project

Mysteries

• Nevada Barr's name has become synonymous with adventures in national parks

• John Straley the setting is Alaska, both urban and wild

• John D. MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen it is Florida

• Jane Langton New England towns• Judith Van Gieson, the Southwest• Writers associated with cities who treat

environmental topics include Sara Paretsky with Chicago and Barbara Neely with Boston.

Florida Favorites

•John D. MacDonald

Carl Hiaasen

Science Fiction

Anti-technological• Jean Hegland

Cautionary Tale• Arthur Herzog

De-homocentric OrientationMolly Gloss, The

Dazzle of DayQuakers and Whitman

Biology and Other Sentient Beings

• Joan Slonczewski

•Biology Professor •Kenyon College

• The Children Star

Thank You!