“Here’s where it all ends: a long, straight road between fields.” (Harrison 2015): Exploring the Materiality of Nature in Melissa Harrison’s Novels All Among the Barley (2018) and At Hawthorn Time (2015)
Contemporary British nature writing has recently been highly concerned with the experience of precariousness in both the human experience and the natural world while experimenting with the materiality of books. Melissa Harrison’s novels, when she writes for adults, bear the trace of her desire to re...
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| izdano v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2025
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| Online dostop: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Izvleček: | Contemporary British nature writing has recently been highly concerned with the experience of precariousness in both the human experience and the natural world while experimenting with the materiality of books. Melissa Harrison’s novels, when she writes for adults, bear the trace of her desire to reflect on the interaction between the human and nonhuman worlds, and this is particularly prominent in At Hawthorn Time (2015), and more recently the historical novel All Among the Barley (2018). This article aims to examine Harrison’s fiction as it engages with the natural world and teases out new ways of weaving material concerns about nature in her narratives. As she specifically reworks and challenges pastoral tropes, she creates realist fiction which connects with the nonhuman world with clear political concerns regarding vulnerability. Fragile characters in unstable situations interact with communities and the land in a way that, as I contend, reinvests realism with care and connection in a profoundly political manner. |
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