'Domestic Geography' and the Politics of Scottish Landscape in Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain
Titel:
'Domestic Geography' and the Politics of Scottish Landscape in Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain
Auteur:
Carter, Gillian
Verschenen in:
Gender, place and culture
Paginering:
Jaargang 8 (2001) nr. 1 pagina's 25-36
Jaar:
2001-03-01
Inhoud:
In its exploration of the reading possibilities of a domestic geography metaphor, this article highlights an engagement with the natural world as both embodied experience and textual practice in Nan Shepherd's neglected prose work, The Living Mountain . Domestic geography is intended as a pathway which shows how the structure and content of this text are inseparable and, by highlighting the complex narrative arrangement of The Living Mountain , privileges the textual representation of an engagement with the natural world from the perspective of a native dweller. In unearthing this forgotten native perspective on the Scottish landscape, the article examines how Shepherd uncovers the hidden ideological nature of the dominant discourses - of science, history, romanticism and landscape aesthetics - which have come to define the Scottish landscape. Drawing on the limited biographical material available on Shepherd, and in a close reading of the text itself, the article shows that both the Cairngorm Mountains and the manuscript of The Living Mountain were an important part of Shepherd's everyday space.
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