Narrative Scholarship: Storytelling in Ecocriticism

Suzanne Ross, "What is Narrative Scholarship and Why Is It Relevant to Ecocriticism?"

As I prepare to write this statement about narrative scholarship and its role in ecological criticism, I am aware of two things simultaneously--a memory and a sound. I am recalling the quick, downhill walk away from an impending thunderstorm that I took with a friend last spring during which we talked about this thing called narrative scholarship. The seed ideas for this statement were planted in my mind on that walk. I can still see my friend ahead of me on the trail, hear my friend's words. Walking and talking, walking and talking, they were the means by which the ideas were coming. At the moment and in the midst of my recollection, I listen with one ear to the rhythmic purr-breathing of a cat in the chair behind me. Dependably, he is my companion when I sit down to write. My memory of a past walking conversation and the present sound of a companionable cat are mutually relevant because they signal interests and commitments in my scholarship. These links in potential narratives work to join my actual life in the material world here and now with my study of literary representations of human understanding and action within what Neil Evernden calls that "great amorphous mass of otherness that encloaks the planet."

My efforts at scholarship of any sort, whether this statement or an essay I recently wrote about Sally Carrighar's representations of the "self-worlds" of other animals, inevitably take place in lived contexts. They are informed, even motivated by my past and my present, my experiences, my desires, and my commitments. I want the parts of my life to cohere. And most relevantly to this discussion, a means of making my professional work, ecocritical scholarship, authentically congruent with the whole of my life experience.

The literature we cherish speaks of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life and seeks to reveal the embeddedness of human life in the life of the world. Narrative scholarship seeks to embed scholarship in life. By tracing the disparate connectivities between texts and life experiences, literature and the world, it is clearly ecological. The stories we tell reveal the ways in which we ourselves are woven into the world and how our work as scholars is but one form of human action within the world. Our stories provide the central terms by which scholarship is anchored to life as well as the terms on which the value of that scholarship can be judged.

I believe that scholarship of any kind, but ecocritical scholarship crucially so, must be grounded, bound to the earth. Narrative scholarship seeks to do this by situating ecocritical theory in life practice; theory and practice are thus tested against and informed by one another.

Narrative scholarship is about engagement with the world. It is about giving--time, energy, and effort, whether emotional, physical or intellectual. It is about field work and volunteer work. It is about publicly and complexly linking one's sense of oneself with a scholarly project. It is a way of saying, "I stand here."

Narrative scholarship is about intimacy within the world. Knowledge is born of intimacy. As is compassion. Narrative scholarship is a way of saying, "I stand with." Perhaps it's a way of wearing our hearts on our sleeves. For that reason, it is about both advocacy and risk.

Just as Barry Lopez has described the traditional role of story in human life--that it functions to bring the interior landscape into accord with the exterior landscape, narrative scholarship seeks to anchor the scholarly act in the world. Its goal is to embed scholarship authentically in life. In so doing, it reveals the particular experiences, desires, commitments that motivate and shape each scholarly act. Really, what I'm trying to say is that narrative scholarship is about love.

Suzanne Ross, St. Cloud State University