Georgic Echoes in 'The Long Dry' and 'The Dig' by Cynan Jones
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22011759 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Angelo Monaco (0000-0002-7604-1314, University of Bari Aldo Moro, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 51-66 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-28 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ecozon European Journal of Literature Culture and Environment (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2171-9594 • E-ISSN: 2171-9594 |
| Publisher | Universidad de Alcala (PUBLISHER • ES) |
| DOI | 10.37536/ecozona.2021.12.2.4183 |
| OpenAlex | W3209042035 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
From his debut novel, The Long Dry (2006), to his most recent, Stillicide (2019), the non-human has played a prominent role in Cynan Jones’ fiction. Of Jones’ texts, The Long Dry and The Dig (2014) specifically engage with cultivation, farming, and raising livestock in a Welsh rustic setting. Both novels present a rural world that resists idealised forms of representing nature as some kind of idyll, thus calling into question the separation between human and non-human. Starting from this premise, my working hypothesis is that the relationship between human and non-human constitutes a relevant trope in Jones’ fiction since they are both caught in the very same moment of crisis, change and transformation. To this end, I would like to read The Long Dry and The Dig through Timothy Morton’s idea of the mesh that connects human to non-human. Firstly, I will discuss the generic features of the novels, such as shifting focalisation and temporal disorientation which can be said to favour an encounter between storytelling and material reality. Secondly, I will address Jones’ interest in the erosion of the border between human and non-human, illustrating the affective bonds and sensory ties that connect both dimensions. Taken together, Jones’ novels entail a deep eco-georgic stance in that rural life is recast in terms of a thematic and material space that brings together human and non-human, conflating change and crisis, failure and success
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Epistemology · Idyll · Liminality · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Premise · Sociology · Storytelling · Welsh · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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