"I am not escaping to the countryside" : Pastoral Awareness in British New Nature Memoirs written by Millennials
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2021-06-30
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en
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The pastoral tradition has been around in art and literature for centuries. The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to find out how the pastoral tradition establishes itself in British New Nature Memoirs written by millennials. Previous research has mainly been concerned with New Nature Memoirs written by older generations. By examining New Nature Memoirs of three debut millennial authors, this study looks at whether the pastoral tradition is used in a different manner from before. It examines three separate characteristics of the pastoral mode in a close reading of three different memoirs: the notion of retreat and return is applied to The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, liminality to Out of the Woods by Luke Turner, and the Georgic to Rootbound: Rewilding a Life by Alice Vincent. The close reading demonstrates that all memoirs show a critical awareness of and an engagement with the pastoral tradition. Nevertheless, they do use the pastoral mode unironically. This leads to the conclusion that, unlike previous New Nature Memoirs, these three recently published British New Nature memoirs written by millennials can be classified as metapastoral texts.
Keywords: pastoralism, new nature memoirs, retreat and return, liminality, the georgic, metapastoralism
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Faculteit der Letteren