Of rat waldens and quests for rubber duckies: zeugma as structural principle of the new nature writing

Abstract

The rhetorical device of zeugma, where one part of speech is used to yoke more than one other part of a sentence in a surprising and often ironically humorous way, can be seen as the governing figure, or the operative structural principle, of the new nature writing of the last decade or so. The new nature writing makes ironic use of the language of traditional nature writing in order to deflate the tradition's romantic and transcendental bent. We can see the tactic clearly in Robert Sullivan's Rats, which liberally borrows chapter titles and language from Thoreau's Walden, appropriating them in the service of celebrating not some pastoral ideal like Walden Pond but a rat-filled alley in New York City. Even as the tone shifts from spiritual reverence to comic irony, the tactic shifts our focus away from the tradition's emphasis on sacred and sublime landscapes and redirects our attention to what Scott Hess has called “everyday nature.”

Keywords::

• nature writing
• zeugma
• irony
• Henry Thoreau
• Walden
• Robert Sullivan
• Rats

Notes

^1. The irony evident in so much contemporary nature writing has been neatly described and analyzed by Josh Call in “Ironic Ecology” (forthcoming in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment). Call says that recent nature writers rely on a “doubled” irony “that always takes us to the ecological”; in essence, their irony is employed to critique ecocentrism, but “instead of taking us [back] to a kind of anthropocentrism, a critique of ecocentrism leads us to an anti-centrism: a de-centering of the idea of a center itself” (19). Thus, irony becomes “a rhetorical strategy for pushing us past the expectations built by … environmental rhetoric” (18). Call and I are treading on the same ground, but though we are both dealing with irony as a means of distinguishing contemporary nature writing from the nature writing tradition, and though we use several similar examples (such as Sullivan's Rats and Gessner's My Green Manifesto), our essays differ in significant ways. My analysis complements Call's both by identifying zeugma as governing figure of the new nature writing and by tracing Sullivan's many ironic borrowings of specific passages from Walden as a way of suggesting the parodic quality of the new nature writing. The zeugmatic tendencies and the parodic approach seem to me central to the irony that both Call and I see as pervasive in the new nature writing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Stuart Marshall

Ian Stuart Marshall, a professor of English and Environmental Studies at Penn State Altoona, is a former president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. He is the author of four books: Story Line: Exploring the Literature of the Appalachian Trail (Virginia, 1998), Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need (Virginia, 2003), Walden by Haiku (Georgia, 2009), and Border Crossings: Walking the Haiku Path on the International Appalachian Trail (Hiraeth, 2012). Ian is also a co-editor of Coming into Contact: Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Georgia, 2007). Address: Ivyside Park Altoona, PA 16601-3760, USA. [email: [email protected]]