What happens to man’s place when non-human nature – man’s environment – is under threat? Norwegian author Maja Lunde explores this in the four novels that make up the “climate quartet,” Bienes historie (2015), Blå (2017), Przewalskis hest (2019) and Drømmen om et tre (2022), in which she discusses various climate issues. This master’s thesis investigates how Lunde establishes the significance of place and the meaning of nature as a place in her climate quartet, with an emphasis on the dystopian portrayal of place and the relationship between the human and the non-human. The analysis employs a thematic close reading approach, using ecocriticism as a general theoretical framework. In particular, the works of scholars Ursula K. Heise, Doreen Massey, and Antonia Mehnert on the meaning of place contribute to this study’s analytical framework, which includes concepts such as sense of place, de- and reterritorialization, riskscape, non-places, the global and the local. The study also draws on Sigmund Freud’s and Martin Heidegger’s concepts of the Uncanny. The thesis shows that in Lunde’s climate fiction, place is a prominent actor because it threatens the characters' existence and can be perceived as a catalyst for the stories’ events. The characters’ identity as nomads who traverse the world as a global riskscape is a key theme. The fictional world is characterized by emptiness, which can be perceived as a result of deterritorialization. The emptiness in some places leads to the concept of the Uncanny in both the dystopian future perspective, where the climate-changed world is depicted as an uncanny place, and in the past and present perspectives, where nature is often depicted as an uncanny quasi-object. The characters’ awareness of nature as an ambivalence is particularly significant. The analysis of Lunde’s use of place and the meaning of nature as a place provides a nuanced exploration of the complex relationship between humans and their environment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-507409 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Smout, Katrijn |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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