Modern Language Review

MLR, .,   Unconscious, Lawrence writes that ‘modern music is analytical, critical, and it has discovered the power of ugliness’, and readers would benefit from some enlargement on that. What might ugliness mean for Lawrence? Is it an essential value or a critical one, and how might it align with what is said about Primitivism? Finally, readers may wonder how traditional Lawrence is with regard to music. It is curious how the book leaves the question open. Reid does discuss Nietzsche, but she does not make him crucial to modernism. Yet with him, with Mann (from Buddenbrooks onwards), with Adorno, and with Mann and Adorno together (in Doctor Faustus) come many indirect helps which Reid might consider overmuch theorizing. Nonetheless , her enthusiasms deserve further complementing from those arguments about music’s diabolism, or its death wish, and its contradictory relation to the senses and escape from the sensuous—issues not irrelevant to Lawrence. SWPS U W J T Environment and Narrative: New Directions in Econarratology. Ed. by E J and E M. (eory and Interpretation of Narrative) Columbus: Ohio State University Press. . x+ pp. $.. ISBN ––––. Erin James and Eric Morel have put together an interesting collection of essays focusing on ‘econarratology’. is term is still very much a neologism. It denotes an emerging subfield studying the reciprocal relationship between environment and narrative—clearly a vital project. Nevertheless, both its key terms are extremely general and malleable. ‘e environment’ is, aer all, everything; meanwhile, ‘narrative ’ can characterize even the merest act or structure of making sense. It is not surprising that ‘econarratology’ walks an occasionally fine line in some essays between novel insight and a reformulation of the relatively obvious. At the same time, the focus on narrative, as Greg Garrard’s paper argues, counters well the tendency in ecocritical scholarship to ignore issues of ‘telling’ in favour of the ‘told’. e volume informs us that two simple premisses underly ‘econarratology’. One is that the environmental crisis compels a reconsideration and revision of the nature of narrative. e other is ‘that stories about the environment significantly influence experiences of that environment, and vice versa’ (p. ). e latter is mostly a restatement of the central claim of literary ecocriticism more broadly, that cultural representations of the environment have social power and efficacy. However, the casual-sounding ‘and vice versa’ opens into more novel and more controversial modes of questioning. us, an essay by Eric Morel considers how an awareness of climate change must in turn change the way we respond even to familiar historical narratives. ree major issues in econarratology are highlighted very effectively by James and Morel in the Introduction and subsequently engaged in the essays. () First is the need to challenge the way most narratology to date has been anthropocentric, assuming that making narratives is an exclusively human activity related to the  Reviews possession of language. How does one represent the non-human in narrative, and what debates must ensue about the nature and limits of anthropocentrism? Jon Hegglund’s contribution makes claims for the power of narrative in highlighting non-human agency (in horror literature or sci-fi). Mention is also made in the Introduction of children’s fiction, which is so oen about animals, though children’s literature is sadly absent from the main body of essays. () Second is the issue of narrative ethics, the way narratives position or assume their agents and recipients in culturally specific ways, making narratology engage issues of cultural politics beyond the kinds of exclusively technical or formal analysis and classification with which it is still oen identified. () A third key direction for narratology engaged here is a turn towards cognitive science, as in Matthew M. Low’s exploratory paper on how its cognitive modelling through narratives can work as a resource for the actual restoration of the American prairie. e edited collection of essays is a staple form of research publication in the humanities. However, it is probably rare for someone other than a reviewer to read a collection from cover to cover. I would also wager that if a survey were done of citations from this kind of critical anthology, the introduction...