Collection of essays connecting ecocriticism and narrative theory to encourage constructive discourse about narrative's influence on real-world environmental perspectives.

Never before has a collection of original essays strived to create such constructive, shared discourse between ecocritical and narrative scholars as well as environmental humanities scholars interested in narrative. Erin James and Eric Morel's volume Environment and Narrative: New Directions in Econarratology explores the complexity of pairing material environments and their representations with narrative forms of understanding.To explore the methodological possibilities within "econarratology," the contributors evaluate the mechanics of how narratives convey environmental understanding via building blocks such as the organization of time and space, characterization, focalization, description, and narration. They also query how readers emotionally and cognitively engage with such representations and how the process of encountering different environments in narratives stands to affect real-world attitudes and behaviors.

Theory and case studies demonstrate the analytic potential of mutually constitutive “narrative networks” in environmental governance.

This book argues narrative, people and place are inseparable and pursues the consequences of this insight through the design of narrative environments. This is a new and distinct area of practice that weaves together and extends narrative theory, spatial theory and design theory. Examples of narrative spaces, such as exhibitions, brand experiences, urban design and socially engaged participatory interventions in the public realm, are explored to show how space acts as a medium of communication through a synthesis of materials, structures and technologies, and how particular social behaviours are reproduced or critiqued through spatial narratives. This book will be of interest to scholars in design studies, urban studies, architecture, new materialism and design practitioners in the creative industries.

Many contemporary environmental risks and global environmental changes occurring today are unprecedented in the history of human life on earth. However, the images and narratives through which humans relate to these phenomena are built on existing cultural tropes and narrative models. Cultural, social, and historical contexts strongly influence how we construct images and narratives of nature and the environment. It is therefore highly important to study such narratives in works of literature, film, and other forms of cultural expression in relation to the specific circumstances from which they arise. Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment is the first English language anthology that presents ecocritical research on northern European literatures and cultures. The contributors examine specifically Nordic narratives of nature and the environment, with a focus on the cultures and literatures of the modern northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, including Sápmi, which is the land traditionally inhabited by the indigenous Sami people. Covering northern European literatures and cultures over a period of more than two centuries, this anthology provides substantial insights into both old and new narratives of nature and the environment as well as intertextual relations, the variety of cultural traditions, and current discourses connected to the Nordic environmental imagination. Case studies relating to works of literature, film, and other media shed new light on the role of culture, history and society in the formation of narratives of nature and the environment, and offer a comprehensive and multi-faceted overview of the most recent ecocritical research in Scandinavian studies.

Argues that a richer understanding of the forms and functions of narrative in the Anthropocene provides us with invaluable insight into how stories shape our world.

“Storyworlds,” mental models of context and environment within which characters function, is a concept used to describe what happens in narrative. Narratologists agree that the concept of storyworlds best captures the ecology of narrative interpretation by allowing a fuller appreciation of the organization of both space and time, by recognizing reading as a process that encourages readers to compare the world of a text to other possible worlds, and by highlighting the power of narrative to immerse readers in new and unfamiliar environments. Focusing on the work of writers from Trinidad and Nigeria, such as Sam Selvon and Ben Okri, The Storyworld Accord investigates and compares the storyworlds of nonrealist and postmodern postcolonial texts to show how such narratives grapple with the often-collapsed concerns of subjectivity, representation, and environment, bringing together these narratological and ecocritical concerns via a mode that Erin James calls econarratology. Arguing that postcolonial ecocriticism, like ecocritical studies, has tended to neglect imaginative representations of the environment in postcolonial literatures, James suggests that readings of storyworlds in postcolonial texts helps narrative theorists and ecocritics better consider the ways in which culture, ideologies, and social and environmental issues are articulated in narrative forms and structures, while also helping postcolonial scholars more fully consider the environment alongside issues of political subjectivity and sovereignty.