An archipelagic literature: re-framing ‘The New Nature Writing’

This paper proposes a reconsideration of ‘The New Nature Writing’ as an archipelagic literature, a literature concerned with the diverse and distinctive cultures of Britain and Ireland as much as with its nature. It interrogates the term ‘nature writing’ as applied to this recent literary movement and outlines some differences between this and ‘place writing’. It also traces the influence of archipelagic criticism on this recent movement, exploring some common ground between devolutionary and environmental politics. Finally, it proposes that the archipelagic perspective offers a potentially quite useful means of thinking through some recent debates around the status of place in a modern, global environment.