The essay explores a new way of interpreting the role of setting in Jane Eyre arguing that nature does not only provide a pretty backdrop for the story. The theoretical approach used in the study is ecocriticism, an earth-centered method. This approach is juxtaposed with a traditional linear analysis of setting in Jane Eyre. The essay is structured along two main lines. In the first part I challenge the traditional linear approach to setting and in the second I show that Jane Eyre is intertwined with nature from the very start. Lawrence Buell’s theory of place, in particular, is used to demonstrate that Eyre is not necessarily a lost soul. By contrast, the many descriptions of nature in the novel imply that her character is so entwined with setting that she could be at home wherever life may take her.

The aim of this study is to study how the themes of loss, hope and place attachment is presented in relation to the concept of ecoglobalist affects in the contemporary nature writing of Swedish author Kerstin Ekman and American author Terry Tempest Williams. I have performed a comparative close reading of three works per author and discussed them in relation to the definitions of nature writing and ecoglobalist affects by Lawrence Buell and the definition of place attachment as a psychological process by Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford. I have found that all of the texts are clear cases of environmentally oriented literature, that the depictions of loss, hope and place attachment are very similar and that while Ekman focuses on the lack of general public knowledge and mostly refrains from dissolving boundaries between the self and the environment, Williams focuses more on the latter. I also found that while examples of ecoglobalist affects could be read in works by both authors in different ways, they were not present in all of the texts. / Syftet med denna studie är att studera hur förlust, hopp och platsbundenhet presenteras som teman i relation till begreppet ecoglobalist affects i Kerstin Ekmans och Terry Tempest Williams naturessäer. Jag har genomfört en komparativ närläsning av tre verk per författare och diskuterat dem i relation till Lawrence Buells definition av nature writing och ecoglobalist affects, samt Leila Scannells och Robert Giffords definition av platsbundenhet som psykologisk process. Studien fann att samtliga av texterna är klara exempel på miljöorienterad litteratur, att skildringarna av förlust, hopp och platsbundenhet har många likheter samt att Ekmans essäer fokuserar på allmän kunskapsbrist och mestadels avstår från att upplösa gränser mellan jaget och den icke-mänskliga naturen, medan Williams fokuserar mer på det sistnämnda. Jag fann även att ecoglobalist affects kunde läsas i verk av båda författarna, men inte i samtliga av de undersökta texterna.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur Jacques Werup förhåller sig till platsen i diktsamlingarna 48 dikter från Österlen och Septemberljus. Undersökningen utgår från Werups tydliga förankring i den skånska poesitraditionen, där Lawrence Buells ekokritiska platsbegrepp utgör ett ledsagande perspektiv för analysen. Werup gör upp med en skånska pastoral tradition genom att belysa senmodernitetens följder i sin poesi, vilket leder honom mot en poesi där samhällets mobila karaktär kommer till uttryck på ett mer autentiskt sätt. Genom sin icke-idylliserande poesi försöker Werup gestalta en upplevelse av platsen som svarar mot vårt senmoderna samhälle. / The aim of the study is to investigate how Jacques Werup relates to place in the poetry collections 48 dikter från Österlen and Septemberljus. The investigation is based on Werup's clear connection with the Scanian poetry tradition, where Lawrence Buell's ecocritic concept of place leads the analysis. Werup makes up with a Scanian pastoral tradition by highlighting the consequences of late modernity in his poetry, which leads him towards a poetry where the mobile nature of society is expressed in a more authentic manner. Through this non-idyllic poetry Werup tries to portray an experience of place in line with our late modern society.

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of the country. When Meliboeus begins his journey he does not travel toward a specific geographical location. Because the gods have forced him from his land and severed his spiritual connection to nature he travels into the unknown. This is the starting point from which I develop neo-pastoral threads in contemporary literature and discuss the alienation that people experience when they are no longer connected to a spirit of the land or genius loci. Neo-pastoralism relates Bakhtin’s idea of chronotope and the expansion of the narrative voice of the novel to include the time/space dialogic. Neo-pastoral fiction shows people in their quest to find spirituality in spite of damage from chemical catastrophic events and suggests they may turn to technology as an ideological base to replace religion. The (anti) heroes of this genre often feel no connection with Judeo-Christian canon yet they do not consider other models of spirituality. Through catastrophes related to the atomic bomb, nuclear waste accidents, and the realization of how chemical pollutants affect the atmosphere, neo-pastoral literature explores the idea of apocalypticism in the event of mass annihilation and the need for canonical reformation. The novels explored in this dissertation are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49; Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Don DeLillo’s White Noise; Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.