Narrative Scholarship: Storytelling in Ecocriticism

David Taylor, "Teaching and Narrative Scholarship"

"I was thinking this morning of Thoreau's way of writing, and what a mistake I have made in not heeding it. I am afraid I try to say things in too pretty a way--aim to have the page too smooth, to have it read well. I am too afraid to give the mind a jolt, which is a mistake. Thoreau doesn't care how many jolts he gives--the more, the better--they add zest to a page." (John Burroughs, Journals)

"My mother is a fish." (Faulkner, As I Lay Dying)

"The quest for an authentic language is pursued within a framework in which language, consciousness, and landscape are interrelated." (J. M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa)

When I think of the teachers who inspire me (no matter the field of study), the common thread among them is not their command of dates, theorems, or the Holman Handbook, but a genuine personal investment in the material being taught. By "personal investment" I mean that these teachers give me a chance to listen to their background with the material and to see how their learning processes take place. As we know, learning is made up far more of miscues, errant interests, dawdling in unfrequented stacks in the library, chance articles in the newspaper, and long walks than of crystalline visions or profound theses. In other words, learning is a story and a heck of a lot more like Kafka than Thackeray. Often, though, the classroom environment is a place where we "aim to have the page too smooth, to have it read well." It's comforting this way, an order and arrangement that keeps students busy taking notes and maximizes the amount of data on which to test them. Students know this environment, sense it quickly having had to adapt to it off and on for over a decade, and act appropriately by pulling out their spiral notebook and burying their heads in note taking. Like Vardaman, the information we're given may be construed in narrow contexts. On the other hand, those of you who have incorporated field work into your classroom know what a "jolt" it can be. Some students are exuberant, some are scared, and some want to know if this will be on the test. Those of you who have opened a discussion of a text with a personal story about an early reading (what you might think of now as a misreading) know that many students gain confidence and trust from this and are far more willing to discuss their own views.

Narrative scholarship and teaching is about opening up possibilities and other stories; it is about a diversity of views and readings (sounds like reader response). As good storytelling encourages the listener to consider other ways of seeing the landscape, so, too, narrative teaching encourages other ways of understanding information by contextualizing the class environment (contextualizing the class itself is not typical reader response). What's ecocritical about narrative scholarship and teaching? Coetzee's "quest for an authentic language" is "pursued" in an interrelation between "language, consciousness, and landscape." The more care and thought we put into the prospects of word, personal story, environment (suburb, inner city, classroom, library, or trail) , and their interrelation, the better we are pursuing authentic communication.

David Taylor, Converse College