Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:49:49.594Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 17 - Deep Time Visible

from Part II - Anthropocene Themes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2021

John Parham
Affiliation:
University of Worcester
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores a selection of new nature writing by Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie, Adam Nicolson, David Gange and Amy Liptrot, which features Scottish islands at the British archipelago’s farthest Atlantic edges. These accounts speak to the cognitive and imaginative challenges of the Anthropocene, bringing deep time and planetary interconnections into view, evoking temporal scales that range from 600 million years in the past to millions of years in the future, oceanic tides that move to the pull of celestial bodies, and animals whose migrations trace lines across the globe. They also enable us to think through more elusive Anthropocene effects – its uncanniness, and the way in which it requires us to imagine ourselves as spectres haunting the deep time of the future. At the same time, these works offer a glimpse of alternative, interim narratives in which we learn to be better ancestors for human generations still to come.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Deep Time Visible
  • Edited by John Parham, University of Worcester
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene
  • Online publication: 28 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108683111.019
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Deep Time Visible
  • Edited by John Parham, University of Worcester
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene
  • Online publication: 28 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108683111.019
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Deep Time Visible
  • Edited by John Parham, University of Worcester
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene
  • Online publication: 28 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108683111.019
Available formats
×