“Birds have Proustian capacity for making remembrance” – a post-pastoral reading of John Lewis-Stempel’s Meadowland and the question of anthropomorphising animals

Abstract

The article proposes discussion of John Lewis-Stempel’s Meadowland (2015) developed along two perspectives. One is the post-pastoral reading as suggested by Terry Gifford. He offers a contemporary interpretative mode that draws from both the rich history of British pastoral and countryside writing and from recent ecocritical devices. Additionally, this paper aims to point out the manifold functions of anthropomorphism and presents it as the longestablished strategy of making sense of the ‘outer’ nature. Both animating non-humans in literary representation and post-pastoral depiction of British countryside prevail to be an expression of spatial proximity, and apparently an indispensable prerequisite for co-existence, for sharing material place. Far from causing confusion or misunderstanding, anthropomorphisation has an enduring power of organizing human experience and expressing interconnectedness. In historical terms, it remains a fact that people have always responded to the natural world, and that they have seen animals respond as well, thus turning them into agents.