Narrative in the Anthropocene. By Erin James.

Abstract

Erin James begins Narrative in the Anthropocene with two observations: first, the environmental humanities’ heavy focus on environmental representation has sidelined the role of narrative theory in ecocriticism; and, second, narrative theory itself has hardly engaged with environmental themes and issues. James fills this gap by offering the term Anthropocene narrative theory, a mode of textual analysis that reveals how characteristics of the Anthropocene influence narrative structure and fundamentally impact the ways in which humans tell and receive stories. James offers Anthropocene narrative theory as an analytical mode able to reveal different Anthropocene imaginaries. By focusing on unpacking the logic and flow of a text’s structure, James highlights unnarrated but tacit markers of Anthropocene thought, thereby opening for assessment how narrative structures reflect or challenge ways of thinking in the Anthropocene. An Anthropocene narrative theory reading of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, for example, uncovers the Western centrality and colonial violence implicit in the novel’s plot and aristocratic British setting, signaling the naturalized structure of colonial ideologies and attitudes in nineteenth-century readerships. Similarly, James’ reading of Ian McEwan’s realist climate change novel Solar suggests that the novel’s third-person limited viewpoint, grounded in the egotistical anthropocentrism of its main character, challenges readers to disrupt the self-centered, human exceptionalist values and priorities that characterize a facet of contemporary Anthropocene thought and action. Ultimately, Anthropocene narrative theory serves as a critical window into past, present, and future human cognitive structures and the worlds they build.