Ecocriticism and the Island: Readings from the British-Irish Archipelago

276 Pages·2023·5.253 MB·English

by  Pippa Marland

Ecocriticism and the Island
Rethinking the Island
Series Editors:
Elaine Stratford, Professor in the School of Geography, Planning,
and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania
Godfrey Baldacchino, Professor of Sociology and Pro-Rector
at the University of Malta, UNESCO Co-Chair in Island Studies
and Sustainability
Elizabeth McMahon, Associate Professor in the School of the Arts
and Media, University of New South Wales, Australia
The Rethinking the Island series seeks to unsettle assumptions by comprehen-
sively investigating the range of topological and topographical characteristics
that lie at the heart of the idea of ‘islandness’.
Titles in the Series
Theorizing Literary Islands: The Island Trope in Contemporary
Robinsonade Narratives
Ian Kinane
Island Genres, Genre Islands: Conceptualization and Representation in
Popular Fiction
Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher
Postcolonial Nations, Islands, and Tourism: Reading Real and Imagined
Spaces
Helen Kapstein
Caribbean Island Movements: Culebra’s Trans-Insularities
Carlo A. Cubero
Poetry and Islands: Materiality and the Creative Imagination
Rajeev S. Patke
Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative
Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations
edited by Michelle Stephens and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel
The Notion of Near Islands: The Croatian Archipelago
edited by Nenad Starc
An Introduction to Island Studies
James Randall
Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography
edited by Stefano Malatesta, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, Shahida Zubair,
David Bowen and Mizna Mohamed
Affect, Archive, Archipelago: Puerto Rico’s Sovereign Caribbean Lives
Beatriz Llenín-Figueroa
Ecocriticism and the Island: Readings from the British-Irish Archipelago
Pippa Marland

Ecocriticism and the
Island
Readings from the British-Irish
Archipelago
Pippa Marland
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
86–90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE
Copyright © 2023 by Pippa Marland
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Marland, Pippa, author.
Title: Ecocriticism and the island : readings from the British-Irish archipelago / Pippa
Marland.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2023] | Series: Rethinking the island |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022037685 (print) | LCCN 2022037686 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781786607089 (cloth) | ISBN 9781786607096 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Islands in literature. | English prose literature—History and criticism. |
Ecocriticism. | Creative nonfiction, English—History and criticism. |
LCGFT: Literary criticism.
Classification: LCC PR756.I75 M37 2023 (print) | LCC PR756.I75 (ebook) |
DDC 820.9/32142—dc23/eng/20220923
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037685
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037686
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.
To my beloved family (and other animals), and in
memory of Tim Robinson (1935–2020).
and this great planet passing upwards towards us
out this silence & drifting & blessing of the water
– Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Bermudas’
Then it’s one foot then the other, as you step out
on the road.
How much weight? How much?
– Jane Siberry, ‘Calling All Angels’

Contents
Acknowledgements xi
List of illustrations xv
Preface xvii
Introduction 1
PART I: APPROACHING THE ISLAND 27
1 Taking the ‘Good Step’ in Tim Robinson’s Stones of Aran 29
2 The ‘World-Hungry Art of Words’: Tim Robinson’s Formal
Dialectic 49
PART II: MATERIAL IMMERSION 69
3 ‘The Past Is Too Much with Us’: Material Remains in Brenda
Chamberlain’s Tide-race 71
4 The Living Island: Christine Evans’ Bardsey 95
PART III: THE ISLAND ASSEMBLAGE 109
5 W. G. Sebald’s Orfordness: Rewriting the Romantic Island 111
6 Reading Things: Sebald’s Melancholy Resistance 129
ix