Nation and belonging in contemporary British nature writing

This thesis offers readings of a range of contemporary British nature writing, addressing the ways that nature writers approach the increasingly important and timely issues of national identity, belonging, and heritage. Combining an ecocritical framework with studies of nation and national identity, it proposes that these books draw on and create narratives of nation that, while they often circumvent the nation as an arbiter of belonging, rely on a cultural nationhood. This model of cultural nationhood is often seen to originate in the deep past, and is shown as intertwined with natural history and more-than-human life; it is consequently capable of offering the possibility of a national belonging originating in the natural world and in cultural traditions. In this thesis, I respond to existing criticism of contemporary or ‘new’ nature writing which identifies a post-national tendency in these texts. Framings of both place and identity that appear to elide the nation are prevalent – with local or planetary allegiances seemingly preferred by authors – and the contemporary nation-state is often presented as an obstacle to experiencing a sense of belonging in nature. This thesis develops a line of argument that recentres the nation as an important category of place and identity in nature writing books, by examining the versions of nation that are present in contemporary nature writing books. In exploring the multiple and varied national narratives present in these books, I add nuance to existing scholarship on contemporary nature writing and its relationship to the nation, and show that these books are often engaged with narratives of a cultural nationalism that centres around our relationship to the more-than-human.