Narrative Scholarship: Storytelling in Ecocriticism

Rebecca Raglon, "Narrative Scholarship"

Narrative scholarship offers up the rather frightening prospect of thousands of professors suddenly beginning to offer up their "stories" to an unprepared public. Imagine every book beginning with a "story" about the inner feelings of the author as he or she approaches such fundamentals as library research. Imagine every learned conference filled with story tellers skirting around the central topic: why discuss Thoreau when we can "share" our "feelings" about Thoreau? or listen to yet another melancholy re-visit to Walden Pond? The point is, why assume that professors' stories are going to be intrinsically interesting, worthy, uplifting, funny, or any good at all? For good stories shouldn't we turn to good writers: poets, novelists, storytellers and playwrites? Why do we need a narrative about a mountain ascent to contextualize an academic's critical approach to John Muir? Surely more relevant contextual information can be found in even a casual perusal of the contributor's notes found in any scholarly journal: "Dr. Doe is a professor of English at Blarney College." We instantly know that Dr. Doe a) has read a lot of books, b) has a steady salary, c) has ample leisure to pursue outdoor activities and d) is probably not a world-renowned storyteller. What more contextualization is needed? Finally, we might wish to ponder the wisdom of encouraging our students to become adept in "narrative scholarship." After sifting through the revelations of their "peak" wilderness experiences, their intimate thoughts of life, death, nature, birth, wonder, sex and whatever else they might chose to write about, who is going to be comfortable affixing a dreaded "C+" to such heartfelt efforts? Until the academy itself thoroughly changes, then, "narrative scholarship" is bound to be nothing more than a self indulgent exercise.

Rebecca Raglon, University of British Columbia