The Transmission of the Pastoral Mode in Sarah Hall’s Haweswater (2002)
Literary scholars have argued that the return of the pastoral mode in contemporary literature is sparked by the environmental crisis (Lilley 29). Such a return is a testimony to the adaptability and reflexivity of this literary tradition. I argue that Sarah Hall transforms and reconfigures the pasto...
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| Опубликовано в: : | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Главный автор: | |
| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Anglais |
| Опубликовано: |
Études britanniques contemporaines
2024
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| Предметы: | |
| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Итог: | Literary scholars have argued that the return of the pastoral mode in contemporary literature is sparked by the environmental crisis (Lilley 29). Such a return is a testimony to the adaptability and reflexivity of this literary tradition. I argue that Sarah Hall transforms and reconfigures the pastoral mode so as to transfer it to the present and adapt it to contemporary environmental concerns. Haweswater presents the reader with a pastoral setting that is far from idyllic as the narrative depicts the flooding of a Lake District valley to enable the construction of a dam designed to provide the city of Manchester with water. Far from the escapism and idealisation pastoral has long been accused of (Sales 17), this novel offers a powerful and complex representation of how the pastoral tradition and contemporary concerns for the destruction of the environment intersect. Hall borrows some characteristics of Terry Gifford’s ‘post-pastoral’ (Gifford 3) to put into perspective the social, political and environmental consequences of exploiting nature and the non-human entities that inhabit it. |
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