Conversations in the wildwood: narrators, readers and the rise of the ecological self

Abstract

New nature writing has been gaining popularity in the English-speaking world. Using participant observation of a book group, this article finds that reading such ecological writing can facilitate reader shifts in perceptions and the valuing of non-human organisms and the more-than-human world. Shifts are enabled when readers experience reading as an imagined conversation with knowledgeable, friendly author/narrators. Readers construct representations of author/narrators using textual and extra-textual information. Evaluative, narrative and aesthetic feelings, alongside inferences about author/narrators’ abilities to provide accurate natural history information, evoke intellectual pleasure in readers which can transform difficult emotions. By modelling a self that values nature and brings together science and poetic language, author/narrators of ecological writing offer an alternative vision of the self that challenges problematic dualisms in society. Such a sense of self was adopted and developed upon within book group discussions, highlighting the importance of aesthetic, emotional and relational contexts for using ecological literature in environmental education.

Keywords:

• Reading
• selfhood
• book clubs
• psychonarratology
• non-fiction
• literature

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the book club participants for their enthusiasm and dedication and to thank colleagues and anonymous reviewers who gave feedback on earlier versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For example, none of the transcribed material in this article is attributable to the author.

2 The fictional works chosen by the group were Skellig by David Almond (1998), Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), Jay Griffiths’ Anarchipelago (2007) and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992).

3 Pseudonyms are used for participants.

4 A modified version of Gee’s poetic transcription methods (1991) has been used to better convey the rhythm of the spoken language in the quotations throughout this article.

5 For a discussion of how to include reading in outdoor education see Willis (2011). Willis (forthcoming) provides specific activities that can be used in a science communication classroom to help students engage with and produce ecological writing as both readers and authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alette Willis

Alette Willis PhD is Chancellor's Fellow/Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, a professional storyteller with the Scottish Storytelling Centre and co-author of a book of traditional tales for environmental education, Dancing with Trees: Eco-tales of the British Isles (with Allison Galbraith, History Press: Stroud, 2017).