Díaz 1 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...2 1. Theoretical approaches to nature and identity………………………………………...5 1.1. ‘Nature’, deep ecology and social construction…………………………......5 1.2. Ecocriticism and Postcolonialism.................................................................10 1.3. Ecofeminism……………………………………………………………….15 1.4. Pastoral, anti-pastoral and post-pastoral…………………………………...17 2. Literary Analysis…………………………………………………………………….21 2.1. Mythology, symbols and nature…………………………………………...21 2.2. Time and nature……………………………………………………………25 2.3. Space and nature…………………………………………………………...30 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...37 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….40 Díaz 2 Kevin Rodríguez Díaz Professor Manuela Palacios González Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas 23 June 2020 Introduction The theme of my TFG is the relation between nature and identity in the work of Moya Cannon. I have chosen to study this author because I am interested in her capacity to combine ethics and aesthetics. Her exploration of the landscape, matches her interest in discovering what is hidden in language. Furthermore, as I explain later, her poetry has been praised by some critics and contemporaries. Since Cannon’s texts reflect about nature, Ecocriticism seems the best approach to her work. Moya Cannon was born in 1956 in Dufanaghy, in Ireland. She studied at the University College of Dublin and at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge (“Cannon, Moya, 1956-.”). Cannon has written six collections of poetry to date: Oar (1990), The Parchment Boat (1997), Carrying the Songs (2007), Hands (2011), Keats Lives (2015) and Donegal Tarantela (2019). Her poems have been collected and translated to Spanish in Aves de Invierno (2016) by Jorge Fondebrider (Cornejo). She has received the O’Shaughnessy Award in 2001 from the University of St. Thomas and she held the position of Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2011 and is a member of the Irish association of writers and artists Aosdána (Aosdána.com). Her poetry has been praised by her contemporaries, among which we can find relevant names such as Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: “[i]ts sterling qualities are manifest and manifold: a deep interiority and soaring lyricism, and an ability to produce what Tim Robinson has termed ‘geophany’, a showing forth of the earth” (Ní Díaz 3 Dhomhnaill). Finally, her texts have been studied under the theoretical frameworks of Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism and Post-pastoralism. The aim of this TFG is to analyse the relation between nature and identity. For this purpose, the poetry of Moya Cannon should answer questions of place and displacement, nature and its relation to gender and the relation between history, mythology and the environment. This TFG consists of an introduction, one chapter describing the methodology, another chapter of analysis and a conclusion. The first chapter discusses the relation between nature and identity using the theoretical frameworks of Ecofeminism and Postcolonial Ecocriticism. I also think about the consequences that this connection might have. In the second chapter, I intend to analyse the book Oar in order to find Cannon’s views on nature. I conclude my TFG with some considerations on nature and identity as depicted in the collection. The first chapter of this TFG is divided in four sections. The first section is devoted to the discussion of the Deep Ecological Movement and its ethical validity regarding the relation between human and non-human beings. In this part, I also delve into the postmodern conception of the term ‘nature’ as a social construct. In the second section, I introduce the question of national identity by using the theoretical framework of Post-colonialism. To this end, I begin this part with a reflection about the notion of ‘wilderness’ following the ideas of William Cronon. I also debate around the theories of Rob Nixon and Helen Tiffin and Graham Huggan, since their works are really illustrative of the complexities regarding the intersections between Ecocriticism and Post- colonialism. In the third section, I address the relation between gender and nature by introducing the five fundamental ecofeminist positions identified by Noël Sturges and summarized by Naomi Guttman. I also introduce relevant ideas by Val Plumwood and Díaz 4 Patrick Murphy in order to give an account of the current situation regarding Ecofeminism. Finally, I devote the fourth section to the study of the subgenre of ‘pastoral’ and its variants, the ‘anti-pastoral’ and the ‘post-pastoral’. I begin this part by explaining the origins of pastoral and the reason why some theorists assert that this subgenre is dead. I end the section by explaining the main points of post-pastoral poetry. The second chapter of this TFG is devoted to the literary analysis of some of the poems that appear in Oar and it is divided in three sections. The first part discusses Irish mythology and symbols, particularly those that are essential to understand Cannon’s poetry. I devote the second and the third sections to the discussion of the temporal and spatial axis in the texts “Eagle’s Rock”, “Blossom Viewing from the Burren”, “Hills”, “Annals”, “Oar”, “Thalassa” and “Dark Spring”. My intention is to discover, through the analysis of the poems, if the landscape is represented as a region out of history and unaffected by change and environmental threats. Furthermore, I give an account of Cannon’s view on gender and its symbolic relation to nature. Finally, I also analyse the idea of journey and the tension between place and displacement that pervades the whole collection. In the conclusions, I think about the findings of the second chapter under the perspectives of Post-pastoralism, Ecofeminist criticism and Postcolonial Ecocriticism. To begin with, by using Post-Pastoralism as a theoretical framework, I expect to highlight those aspects of Cannon’s poetry that challenge an idealized view of nature and value an ecological perspective of the environment. Secondly, Ecofeminist criticism should help to understand the relation between gender and nature that is portrayed in the poems. Finally, on the basis of the relation between place and nation presented under the theoretical framework of Postcolonial Ecocriticsm, I determine whether Cannon’s poetry Díaz 5 depicts a nationalistic idea of identity or whether, on the contrary, it embraces cultural diversity. 1. Theoretical approaches to nature and identity 1.1. ‘Nature’, deep ecology and social construction The traditional opposition between nature and culture is one of the main obstacles when it comes to identifying the intersections between the oppression of nature and the oppression of the human Other. Upon the basis of such antagonism, some theorists of the first wave of ecocriticism,1 such as Arne Naess, tried to propose a movement known as the Deep Ecological Movement. The movement emerged in opposition to what deep ecology theorists call shallow ecology, the conservationist idea that encouraged the exploitation of the environment as long as it took into consideration the preservation of natural resources (49). Actually, what deep ecologists criticised about shallow ecology was its approach to the environment as a resource for industrial development, that is, the consideration that nature deserves to be well-maintained just because it is necessary for human life and progress (49). The characteristics of this philosophical movement were stated by Naess: (1) The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes. 1 According to Ken Hiltner, first-wave ecocriticism starts in the 1960s and 1970s, when some literary and cultural critics such as Raymond Williams, Carolyn Merchant and Leo Marx, “began considering what literature can tell us about our relationship to the natural world, as well as our current environmental crisis” (1). However, most of these early critics were not specialized in literature (Hiltner 2). In the 1980s other critics such as Aldo Leopold and Lynn White, Jr. questioned the anthropocentrism underlying the Christian tradition, which gave place to the Deep Ecology Movement (Hiltner 2). Finally, in the 1990s there were some specialized literary critics that began to focus on the relation between literature and the environment who wrote mainly about 19th and 20th century literature such as Wordsworth, in the case of Jonathan Bate, and Thoureau, in the case of Lawrence Buell (Hiltner 2). William Cronon is also included by Hiltner within the first-wave ecocriticism, in spite of being very critical with the idealization of wilderness that pervaded the entire first-wave (2). Díaz 6 (2) Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. (3) Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. (4) The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease. (5) Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. (6) Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. (7)