%0 Journal Article 
%A Monaco, Angelo
%T Georgic echoes in "The Long Dry" and "The Dig" by Cynan Jones
%D 2021
%@ 2171-9594
%U http://hdl.handle.net/10017/49937
%X From his debut novel, “The Long Dry” (2006), to his most recent, “Stillicide” (2019), the non-human has played a prominent role in Cynan Jones’ fiction. Of Jones’ texts, “The Long Dry” and “The Dig” (2014) specifically engage with cultivation, farming, and raising livestock in a Welsh rustic setting. Both novels present a rural world that resists idealised forms of representing nature as some kind of idyll, thus calling into question the separation between human and non-human. Starting from this premise, my working hypothesis is that the relationship between human and non-human constitutes a relevant trope in Jones’ fiction since they are both caught in the very same moment of crisis, change and transformation. To this end, I would like to read “The Long Dry” and “The Dig” through Timothy Morton’s idea of the mesh that connects human to non-human. Firstly, I will discuss the generic features of the novels, such as shifting focalisation and temporal disorientation which can be said to favour an encounter between storytelling and material reality. Secondly, I will address Jones’ interest in the erosion of the border between human and non-human, illustrating the affective bonds and sensory ties that connect both dimensions. Taken together, Jones’ novels entail a deep eco-georgic stance in that rural life is recast in terms of a thematic and material space that brings together human and non-human, conflating change and crisis, failure and success.

%K Cynan Jones
%K Eco-georgic
%K Narrative form
%K Human
%K Non-human
%K Eco-geórgico
%K Forma narrativa
%K Humano
%K No-humano
%K Literatura
%K Literature
%K Medio ambiente
%K Environmental science
%~ Biblioteca Universidad de Alcala