"Man is the Story Telling Animal" Graham Swift's Waterland, Ecocriticism and Narratology
Graham Swift's 1983 novel Waterland was one of the first British novels that ecocritics read as an example of postmodern fiction that can also yield a productive ecocritical reading. The novel can also be analyzed from another critical intersection that as yet has been unexplored: that of ecocriticism and narratology. A narratology inflected ecocriticism foregrounds the shaping role that narratives and narrativity play in shaping our perceptions of the nonhuman natural world. With its emphasis on the natural landscape on the one hand and storytelling on the other,Waterland especially invites such an approach. Waterland is narrated by Tom Crick, a middle aged London history teacher. Facedwith early retirement, he departs from the set curriculum and, instead of teaching his pupils about the French Revolution, tells them his own history and that of the region he grew up in, the Fens in eastern England. While his professional and personal life crumbles Crick's wife is admitted to a mental hospital after kidnapping a baby