Nature Writing and Publishing: The Ethics of a Cultural Mapping

• Main Author: Cécile Beaufils
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2018-12-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: nature writing; publishing; ecocriticism; ethics; gift; Macfarlane (Robert)
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5011

This paper proposes to explore the recent popularity of nature writing in Britain as a means to mediate the existence of an ecosystem based on a specific ethics of writing, exploring, and publishing, through examples taken from recent works. Thanks to examples taken from the field of current publishing and starting from observations of the current editorial popularity of nature writing in Britain, we posit that a connection between the land, language and a practical ethics in the realm of publishing has gained increasing visibility in recent years in Britain. In the context of such popularity, acts of linguistic recapturing show how a generation of authors attempts to map the country in a practical way. Studying the recent works of Robert Macfarlane in particular, we see how in order to revitalize the disappearing lexis of nature, he connects language and writing in a cultural mapping, itself inseparable from an ethical element which we consider as fundamental to contemporary nature writing.