NAN SHEPHERD’S THE LIVING MOUNTAIN (1977): A FORERUNNER OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BRITISH NATURE WRITING

Hatice BAKANLAR MUTLU

NAN SHEPHERD’S THE LIVING MOUNTAIN (1977): A FORERUNNER OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BRITISH NATURE WRITING

Articles > Article · 2021

Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, National Refreed University Journal, National, MLA International Bibliography, 2021, vol 8, pp 40-59

Summary

Nan Shepherd (1893- 1981), a Scottish author and nature lover, entered the literary scene with her novels Quary Wood (1928), The Weatherhouse (1930) and A Pass in the Grampians (1933) that focused on the effects of modernity on Scottish rural life and contributed to the intellectual movement known as Scottish renaissance. However, it is because of her 1977 memoir, The Living Mountain that she has gained popularity in recent years. In this mountain memoir, Shepherd shares her impressions about the years she spent hiking in the Cairngorms, a national park in Scotland. The Living Mountain can be seen as a pioneering work for its age due to Shepherd’s deep interest in the non-human animals as well as the natural elements in the mountain range, her narrative which is not centred on a human but shaped around the non-human, her sensitivity to anthropogenic ecological problems and the importance she attached to writing about her bodily sensations and emotions as well as objective observations during her hikes. The purpose of this study is to analyse The Living Mountain considering Shepherd’s alleged non-anthropocentrism, ecological sensitivity and amalgamation of subjective response with objective observations. This study claims that Shepherd’s memoir can be read as a forerunner of twenty-first century nature writing, which some ecocritics like Jason Cowley and Alexander J. B. Hampton prefer to call as “new nature writing”. Twenty-first century nature writing in Britain is supposedly marked by writers’ ecological awareness, their efforts to create non-anthropocentric narratives and the importance they attach to their subjective experiences in nature in addition to objective observations. This paper discusses how Shepherd managed to integrate these characteristics into her writing, which can inspire and guide the new generation writers as they tend to show a non-anthropocentric reaction to the current ecological crisis in their own ways.

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