Nature and Narrative

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 narrativethe 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 unites 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 Mantels Wolf Hall, Toni Morrisons A Mercy, Ian McGuires The North Water, Barbara Kingsolvers The Lacuna, Paul Hardings Tinkers and Enon, J. M. Coetzees Elizabeth Costello, Ian McEwans Solar, and Jenny Offills Weather.