Material Ecocriticism and Sylvan Agency in Speculative Fiction: The Forests of the World 1666928763, 9781666928761

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Material Ecocriticism and Sylvan Agency in Speculative Fiction

Material Ecocriticism and Sylvan Agency in Speculative Fiction The Forests of the World By Britta Maria Colligs

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S / F O RT R E S S A C A D E M I C

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Colligs, Britta Maria, 1987- author.   Title: Material ecocriticism and sylvan agency in speculative fiction : the     forests of the world / by Britta Maria Colligs.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023. | Includes     bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "This comprehensive     study of the sylvan realm in speculative fiction focuses on the     conceptualization of a sylvan and arboreal agency and the     interrelationship between the human and the forest. The author argues     for a re-negotiation of material agency and a facilitation of an     eco-sylvan awareness within the Anthropocene"-- Provided by publisher.   Identifiers: LCCN 2023043736 (print) | LCCN 2023043737 (ebook) | ISBN     9781666928761 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666928785 (paperback) | ISBN 9781666928778 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: Speculative fiction--20th century--History and criticism. |     Trees in literature. | Trees--Effect of human beings on. | Forestry in     literature. | Forestry--Effect of human beings on. | Agent (Philosophy)     | Ecocriticism.  Classification: LCC PN3448.S62 C65 2023  (print) | LCC PN3448.S62  (ebook)     | DDC 809.3876--dc23/eng/20230920  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023043736 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023043737 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Tables

vii

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1

Chapter One: Theorising the Forest: Approaching a Sylvan and Arboreal Agency

17

PART I: THE SYLVAN REALM AND ARBOREAL CHARACTERS

41

Chapter Two: Stepping Into the Sylvan World

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Chapter Three: The Tree as a Diverse Motif and Ecological Symbol

73

Chapter Four: The Forest as a Sylvan Voice and Sylvan Agent for the Environment

97

PART II: HUMAN INTERACTION WITH THE SYLVAN WORLD

137

Chapter Five: The Forest as Commodity and Antagonist

141

Chapter Six: The Forest as a Dwelling





157

Chapter Seven: The Cultural and Environmental Significance of the Forest 167 Conclusion

183

Glossary of Selected Terms



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v

vi

Contents

Bibliography Index

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203

About the Author



207

List of Tables

Table 4.1. Sylvan and Arboreal Voice and Agency Table 8.1. Environmental and Environmentalist Narratives

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Acknowledgments

This journey through the dense forests of the speculative realms would not have been possible without the support of many different people during the various stages of the process. I would like to thank you all for always listening and giving valuable advice when I was missing the forest for the trees.

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THE FORESTS OF THE WORLD In his book The Man Who Planted Trees (2015), Jim Robbins recounts nurseryman David Milarch’s ambitious enterprise to clone the champion trees of the world, the largest and oldest and thus most resilient trees, to create a catalogue of tree genetics to counterbalance the rapid loss of sylvan biodiversity in times of environmental and climate crisis. Robbins comments on the irony that these living beings whose shade we sit in, whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly understood. We need to come, as soon as possible, to a profound understanding and appreciation for trees and forests and the vital role they play, for they are among our best allies in the uncertain future that is unfolding.1

Through this scientific and spiritual narrative, Robbins explores the fascinating material (and symbolic) layers of the tree and proves its considerable significance for Earth’s environment. As a significant contributor to a healthy global environment, the importance of the sylvan ecosystem is undeniable and its protection has become a central aspect in the discussion on how to tackle the issues of climate change in the Anthropocene. In this book, I set out to establish and facilitate such an understanding and acknowledgment of the forest and its sylvan agency by analysing the sylvan realms and arboreal characters of speculative fictions through an ecocritical reading as well as by investigating the relationship between the human characters and the forests of their respective speculative worlds. In doing so, I want to investigate the establishment of an eco-sylvan awareness and an eco-sylvan message that help to create a necessary shift towards an earth-centred perspective. For centuries, humanity has drastically altered the face of the world and through it disturbed Earth’s environment severely and has thereby introduced this current geological epoch of the Anthropocene—the “era of humans.” Transitioning from the previous geological epoch of the Holocene, humanity’s substantial impact on the environment is considered largely responsible 1

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for the current climate crisis. Atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen and ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer proposed the new concept of the Anthropocene in their article “The Anthropocene” (2000) by highlighting the excessive expansion of humankind and the negative effects of the exploitation of Earth’s environment and resources in the last centuries. Crutzen and Stoermer recognise the difficulty and arbitrariness of identifying a specific starting point of this new geological epoch; nevertheless, they situate the beginning of the Anthropocene within the eighteenth century, a time when the Industrial Revolution initiated human impact on the environment to a degree never before seen.2 In a later article, “The Geology of Mankind” (2002), Crutzen provides a substantial list of humankind’s considerable impact on the environment, such as massive deforestation of especially rainforests, the overall exploitation of Earth’s resources, for example through overfishing, as well as the release of harmful emission into the Earth’s atmosphere.3 Scholars of the Anthropocene, such as James Syvitski in “Anthropocene: An epoch of our making” (2012), furthermore highlight the acceleration of the negative trend in the last century with the increase of human population and urbanisation, as well as mass consumption.4 Most recently in 2023, scientists of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) have found direct evidence of environmental and climate change in the annual layers of frozen sediments collected from Lake Crawford, Canada, with which the scientists can read the changes in micro-ecology and geochemistry, as well as the effects of fossil fuel combustion products and so identify the beginning of the Anthropocene with the “Great Acceleration” in the 1950s.5 Consequently, Greg Garrard, Gary Handwerk and Sabine Wilke outline the Anthropocene as an age in which “our species has become a crucially significant factor in potentially cataclysmic climatological and biogeographical changes”6 in their article “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene” (2014). However, the prevalent use of an all-encompassing “we” and “our species” when talking about humanity’s impact within the Anthropocene, thus generating a generic human culpability, is oversimplified and problematic as it is based on generalisation. Swedish historians Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg directly reference Crutzen’s article in their critique on the terminology in “The Geology of Mankind?” (2014) and assess the issues concerning the concept. Malm and Hornborg emphasise that the cornerstones of humankind’s evolution—mastery over fire, the change to an agricultural society, the invention and utilisation of steam power—are not all shared by the entire human population and conclude that the catalysts of the environmental crisis are “Capitalists in a small corner of the Western world”.7 Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts simultaneously investigate the global inequalities and their ramifications for climate change policies in their article “Inequality and the Global Climate Regime: Breaking the North-South Impasse” (2008).

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They highlight the considerable disparity between the global North and global South in terms of responsibility and state that countries of the global North lead the list on global CO₂ emission. At the same time, they reveal a substantial inequality in vulnerability where countries and communities with marginal negative influence on the environment are nevertheless most affected by climate disasters.8 The term and the all-inclusive homogeneous concept of the Anthropocene is furthermore criticised in ecofeminist studies and especially by Indigenous authors and scholars, who both negate the generic blame of all humanity’s negative impact and shine light on the prevalent dominance and hierarchical system of one, male/culture and the global/industrial North, over the other, female/nature and the global South. Thus, Indigenous scholars, such as Métis anthropologist and scholar of Indigenous studies Zoe Todd, argue that the global North is primarily responsible for the continuing climate and environmental crisis. Todd comments on the not-at-all shared culpability of all humans in addition to highlighting the fact that Indigenous scholars and Indigenous knowledge is disregarded in the global discussion on how to tackle the environmental crisis in her article “Indigenizing the Anthropocene” (2015).9 Furthermore, the concept and the accompanying homogenising terminology are criticised for its colonial parameters in Jessica L. Horton’s and Janet Catherine Berlo’s “Beyond the Mirror: Indigenous Ecologies and ‘New Materialism’ in Contemporary Art” (2013) and Kim TallBear’s “An Indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/NonHuman” (2015). Understanding that climate change and its corresponding environmental crisis are de facto “man-made,” albeit not from all of humankind, is to recognise climate change as not simply an anthropogenic yet a “sociogenic” problem, as Malm and Hornborg declare.10 They furthermore present additional neologisms that more accurately reflect on the significance of technology (‘Technocene’) and the overwhelming influence of the major catalyst capitalism (‘Capitalocene’). Jason W. Moore, for instance, considers capitalism as a dominant power system with extensive and horrendous effects on nature. For Moore, the concept of the Capitalocene “asks us to unsettle the comfortable narrative of the Anthropocene, to step outside our comfortable conceptual boxes: industrial and pre-industrial; circulation and production; town and country.” Furthermore, it “argues for situating the rise of capitalism, historically and geographically within the web of life. This is capitalism not as economic system but as a situated and multispecies world-ecology of capital, power and re/production”.11 This notion of the Capitalocene provides a valuable concept for my reading of the characters’ relationship and interaction with the forest and enables me to deduce an environmental and particularly eco-sylvan message in the speculative fictions that helps to facilitate an environmental and eco-sylvan awareness not just in the fictional world but also in our real world, which faces more and more severe environmental

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catastrophes. Recurrent heat waves, such as witnessed in British Columbia, Canada, in July 2021, raging wildfires in the United States, Australia, and Canada in the last years, the melting of the ice caps on the poles, the bleaching out of Australia’s magnificent Great Barrier Reef and the continued loss of biodiversity are all prime examples of the negative effects caused by unchecked (capitalistic) exploitation of the environment. MATERIAL ECOCRITICISM The ever-changing relationship between the human and the environment is at the heart of ecocriticism, and its critical analysis has developed from an initial focus on primarily nature writings, with its beginnings in American Transcendentalism and British Romanticism, to the deeper understanding of nature’s significance and humans’ interaction and interference with the environment in the Anthropocene/Capitalocene. As a field of academic studies, ecocriticism emerged in the 1970s with William Rueckert’s essay “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism” (1978) explicitly referencing the new term for the first time and suggesting an ecocritical reading of literature. In his essay, Rueckert highlights the significance of the new reading as it “has the greatest relevance to the present and future of our world we all live in”.12 However, it is not until the 1990s that ecocriticism is recognised as a distinct movement in the academic humanities, where Cheryll Glotfelty’s essential definition of ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment”13 in her significant anthology The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996) encapsulates the main concern of this literary movement. The understanding of nature and the environment as well as humans’ position within it has developed and evolved throughout the years in, what Lawrence Buell suggests in The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005), different “waves.” Although Buell admits that it is difficult to conceptualise a precise historical development of a literary study, the “waves” or rather “palimpsests” illustrate the altering cultural and academic conceptions of nature and the environment.14 As already mentioned, the first wave of ecocriticism focused largely on nature writing, a field which concerns itself primarily with the depiction and representation of nature and landscape in literature. Although the second wave carried on with the former understanding of nature’s significance and humans’ interaction with the environment, its understanding of nature writing was seen as too restricting in the sole consideration of nature detached from any human habitat and thus, second-wave ecocriticism opened up the concept of the environment to include urban and suburban spaces. Buell exemplifies the distinction between the two waves

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in reference to his two critical works. In line with the first wave, Buell’s The Environmental Imagination (1995) focuses on American nature writing and on the issue of ecocentric and environmental concerns within those texts. In contrast, his Writing for an Endangered World (2001) expands the ecocritical idea to the wider natural and human environment and emphasises human’s negative impact on the environment, a primary concern of the second wave.15 The shift from writings of sublime and poetic nature towards an approach to human’s critical role within nature reflects the political and cultural significance of ecocriticism and environmental concerns in the twentyfirst century. So far, ecocriticism focused predominantly on an American and British understanding of local environments, particularly the wilderness and urban places, which was expanded to a national and ethnically diverse perspective in the third wave in the late aughts. Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic first addressed the new perspectives in their introduction to the 34th volume of MELUS: Multiethnic Literatures of the United States in 2009, where they state that ecocriticism now “recognises ethnic and national particularities and yet transcends ethnic and national boundaries” to investigate “all facets of human experience from an environmental viewpoint”.16 By investigating critical approaches to the environment across ethnic and national boundaries, this new comparative trend in ecocriticism corresponds to the overall tendency to be globally interconnected in all areas of culture and nations. Ecocriticism detaches itself from a singular national approach and concentrates on transnational criticism of the global environment understood as eco-cosmopolitics. Ursula Heise, in Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: An Environmental Imagination of the Global (2008), describes this development towards eco-cosmopolitics by ways of “deterritorialisation” in the way that “the increasing connectedness of societies around the globe entails the emergence of new forms of culture that are no longer anchored in place”17 and proposes a form of “world-citizenship” connecting everyone around the globe. Coexisting with the third wave, the fourth wave of ecocriticism focuses on material ecocriticism; a central idea within my analysis. In broad terms, material ecocriticism recognises the fact that the human body and the material environment are not disconnected entities but co-dependent in a wider network; transforming and influencing each other profoundly. Material ecocriticism has its roots in the interdisciplinary debate of the “material turn” and its consideration of materiality—the interrelation between different bodies, thus acting with and shaping each other—connected to the various developments in natural sciences in the twentieth century and the radical climate and environmental changes. Matter, the physical world and its material objects, is hereby no longer seen as a passive and solely inanimate object but possesses its own, as Karen Barad terms it, “agential realism,” where matter is able to perform in

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Introduction

its own individual way. For Barad, “matter does not refer to a fixed substance; rather, matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency”.18 Thus, the focus is here on a performative act; I will come back to the specific topic of material agency in more detail in the following chapter. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost also highlight the challenge to the prevalent anthropocentric notion of an inanimate matter incapable of acting on its surrounding environment and emphasise that new materialism challenges the modern world’s interaction and exploitation of the environment in their edited volume New Materialism: Ontology, Agency and Politics (2010).19 Furthermore, the two leading proponent of this approach, Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, broadly define material ecocriticism in their edited volume on Material Ecocriticism (2014) as “the study of the way material forms—bodies, things, elements, toxic substances, chemicals, organic and inorganic matter, landscapes, and biological entities—intra-act with each other and with the human dimension, producing configurations of meanings and discourses that we can interpret as stories.”20 It becomes clear that material ecocriticism highlights the interrelationship between the human and physical world and thereby challenges the prevalent notion that agency is an inherently human concept and reveals how matter can narrate a story, too. Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, introduced in the anthology on Material Feminism (2008), edited by her and Susan J. Hekman, and her work Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010), is particularly significant for the establishment of this new trend within contemporary ecocriticism. Drawing on the posthumanist mode of material feminism and new materialism, Alaimo demonstrates how the human body, and especially the toxic body, is part of the environment and how literature illustrates this interconnection between the human body and the physical world, a world which cannot be imagined without the human anymore, on an ethical and material basis. This trans-corporeal body opposes the earlier concept of the master subject of humanist individualism, who sees himself detached from and above the environment. Consequently, Alaimo imagines the human body, the human corporeality, as “trans-corporeality, in which the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-human world, [which] underlines the extent to which the substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from “the environment”.21 Furthermore, the human body is now “generated through and entangled with biological, technological, economic, social, political and other systems, processes, and events, at vastly different scales”.22 As such, the trans-corporeal body itself is an intricate material network and becomes part of the material environment. As Alaimo states, our physical bodies do not exist outside of the surrounding environment in the sense that we are not detached from it but are influenced by and simultaneously influence the environment on a national but also transnational scale

Introduction

7

through everything we do. Therefore, Alaimo’s trans-corporeality establishes an alternative ecocritical reading of the environment and the human within it and a rethinking of epistemologies and ontologies, in which the “conceptions of the human self are profoundly altered by the recognition that ‘the environment’ is not located somewhere out there, but is always the very substance of ourselves”.23 In this case, the idea of trans-corporeality and material ecocriticism concentrates on humans’ obligation towards nature and challenges us to consider our own position towards the environment ethically and politically: Emphasizing the material interconnections of human corporeality with the more-than-human world, and at the same time acknowledging that material agency necessitates more capacious epistemologies, allows us to forge ethical and political positions that can contend with numerous late-twentieth-century/ early-twenty-first-century realities in which “human” and “environment” can by no means be considered as separate: environmental health, environmental justice, the traffic of toxins, and genetic engineering, to name a few.24

Humanity has to recognise its potentially harmful effects on nature and change its thinking as well as behaviour. Alaimo’s concept highlights therefore that all embodied beings are profoundly interconnected with each other and with the environment and the material world; they are influenced by and influence it at the same time. This step away from the rigid and outdated anthropocentric worldview, where the human is detached from the environment and even sees themselves as the master over it, to an understanding of a mutual dependency and significance of the environment is a valuable critical rethinking within the age of the Capitalocene. Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality entails key questions that investigate the position of the human and the general construction of nature, its agency as well as the political and ethical implications of material ecocriticism. Pippa Marland summarises these three issues as follows: First is the premise that there is a shared materiality between the human and non-human world that renders obsolete the distinctions between human and environment, moving beyond the construct of ‘nature’ altogether; second is the idea that all of this shared matter has agency; and third is the ethical and political challenges the complexity and hybridity of these material interminglings suggest.25

Initially, material ecocriticism disperses the long-standing perception of the human at the centre of the world and above all animate and inanimate creatures established in the Great Chain of Being and shares, thus, critical notions with posthumanism. Understanding the human being as one part of the environment on the same level as, for example, animals, has the effect that the

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Introduction

traditional binary systems of human/nature or human/animal are dismantled. This ongoing debate is, for example, also approached by Vicki Kirby in her work on Quantum Anthropologies (2011), where she argues that theories and studies of cultural constructions within anthropology have inadvertently repeated the prevalent binary, such as between culture and nature, they aim to question.26 In her work, Kirby consequently exposes the limitations of those theories that keep the binary and hierarchical divide intact. With this in mind, material ecocriticism positions itself closer to eco-egalitarianism. An additional aspect that highlights the horizontal, in contrast to the hierarchical, structure and the re-evaluation of the environment is the idea of agency. Marland states “one of the ways matter reveals its agency is through its production and embodiment of signs that invest the non-human world with its own systems of signification and meaning”.27 Coole and Frost establish in this case a multitiered ontology in which “there is no definitive break between sentient and nonsentient entities or between material and spiritual phenomena”.28 In the “Te Urewera Act” (2014), this concept was seized and expanded when the former national park in the area of Te Urewera, New Zealand, was transformed into a “legal identity and protected status . . . for its intrinsic worth, its distinctive natural and cultural values, the integrity of those values, and for its national importance”.29 Even though the management of Te Urewera is in the hands of the Tūhoe, the local iwi (tribe), the agency of the non-human world is clearly recognised. Marland’s final issue of material ecocriticism concerns itself with the political and ethical challenges. Here, Jane Bennett’s idea of “thing-power,” discussed in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), demonstrates the mutual influencing between the ‘thing’ and the human. Bennett highlights in her work the active role of the material world in everyday life and attempts to give a voice to a material non-human agency, thus “thing-power.” With this notion, Bennett considers the material non-human as an active actant, thus agent, which becomes more than the material object. As one example of thing-power, she discusses debris, a distinct marker of the inconsiderate consumerist behaviour in the Capitalocene. Bennett quotes from Robert Sullivan’s description of a New Jersey garbage hill in The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventure at the Edge of a City (1999), which reveals the animism of even garbage: There had been rain the night before, so it wasn’t long before I found a little leachate seep, a black ooze trickling down the slope of the hill, an expresso of refuse. In a few hours this stream would find its way down into the . . . groundwater of the Meadowlands; it would mingle with toxic streams . . . But in this moment, here at its birth . . . this little seep was pure pollution30

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The toxic leakage of this New Jersey garbage hill into the local groundwater reveals, on the one hand, the particular thing-power, the non-human agency, of the material place. The leachate reveals its thing-power as pure pollution that makes its way down the hill and into the groundwater and there becomes a part of a greater network of toxic streams. Furthermore, it exposes the interrelational network and human (toxic) transformation of the material world, which then will transform the human body, the trans-corporeal body, itself. Consequently, Bennett finds the ethical value of the notion of thing-power in the generous distribution of value and states that “such a newfound attentiveness to matter and its powers will not solve the problem of human exploitation or oppression, but it can inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations”.31 The profound interconnection and mutual impact of humanity’s capitalistic interests and exploits of the environment becomes clear here. Material ecocriticism, with its renegotiation of matter, its inter- and intra-active agencies and therefore the recognition of an intricate interrelationship between matter, the material world and the human, is vital for a conceptual rethinking of the state of the world in the current Capitalocene and so provides a valuable framework for my analysis of the material forests of the speculative worlds. THE FORESTS OF OUR WORLD In this book, I focus on the fictional representation of the sylvan world and arboreal characters in (American and British) speculative fiction as the forest, together with the state of the great oceans, has become a significant metonymy for the alarming state of the Earth in the Capitalocene. A recent study by Luciana V. Gatti et al., “Amazonia as a Carbon Source Linked to Deforestation and Climate Change” (2021), shows the Amazon rainforest now officially releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than the forest is storing. The research team explored the effects of climate change and deforestation in the Amazonian rainforest to reveal a severe stress for the sylvan ecosystem, an increase in fire occurrences and a higher carbon emission.32 This higher number of released carbon signals a tipping point as the forest with its trees are key players in storing carbon and regulating Earth’s temperature and are thus significant for our environment. David Ellison et al. in “Trees, Forests and Water: Cool Insights for a Hot World” (2017) review a substantial body of research and verifies that forests are essential for Earth’s water availability, as they produce on average 40 per cent of rainfall over land through evapotranspiration. Furthermore, forests can store and regulate their water supplies and thereby cool the temperature as well as transport water, on

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Introduction

a local as well as global level, through actively creating low pressure regions to generate wind which transports the atmospheric moisture.33 In addition, healthy forests are valuable ecosystems for a high range of biodiversity. Massive deforestation, consequently, has an immensely negative effect on the overall environment, where the deforestation process accounts for “nearly a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2016, while also contributing to a global biodiversity crisis”.34 Thus, a re-evaluation of the interference with and impact on the (sylvan) environment coming from, particularly, the global North on a national as well as global scale is necessary. The significance of the sylvan ecosystem for Earth has become more than apparent in recent years. However, forests have also played a vital yet often ambivalent role in human culture and literature; besides balancing out the environment, forests provide us humans, but also (sylvan) fauna, with vital resources, shelters and many stories. On the one hand, humans use the forest’s resources for their individual household and industry as well as the seclusiveness inside and calming energy to hide from injustice and to regenerate in a hectic modern world. On the other hand, the forest always held and still holds an eerie and at times menacing grip on the subconscious mind as well. The often enclosed forest with a clear boundary separates it from its surrounding, often open, landscape inhabited by humans and seems to alter our senses. We have almost no orientation and we encounter new smells and diverse sounds that we might not be able to identify, marking it as an adversary to the civilised human. The forest is the primal antagonistic wilderness and has always stood in contrast to the cultivated enclaves and later urban places of civilisation. When a civilisation rises in might and starts occupying more space, the surrounding or adjoining forest dwindles, especially due to civilisation’s need for the forest’s resources of timber. The reduction of ancient sylvan wilderness in large parts of Europe due to the rise of civilisation is evident in the loss of primal forests and the former idea of the grand sylvan wilderness completely separated from humanity has lost its dark and ominous connotation. Particularly England began the deforestation of its ancient woodlands over four thousand years ago, so that by the time of the reign of William the Conqueror (1066– 1087), as surveyed in his Domesday Book, English woodlands only covered 15 per cent of the island.35 Therefore, England is nowadays amongst the most deforested countries in Western Europe and, as a result, its forests are valued as national and cultural heritages.36 The Woodland Trust for instance, the largest woodland conservation charity in the UK, dedicates itself to the creation, protection, and restoration of native woodland heritage in England. In 2017, the year that marked the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest, the Woodland Trust in collaboration with different sections of UK society launched a new Charter of Trees, Woods, and People to ensure the “rights

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of people in the UK to the benefits of trees, woods and forests”.37 The Tree Charter Principle includes amongst others: planting for the future, celebrating the power of trees to inspire (here, the connection between the trees/forests and cultural stories becomes evident), strengthening the landscape with trees, combating the threats to the natural habitats, and protecting irreplaceable trees and woods, thus also acknowledging the tree’s arboreal agency. The state of the forests is somewhat different in North America, where the sylvan wilderness is still intact to some extent and protected in the form of national parks. As a last bastion against the rise and hectic pace of civilisation, the American wilderness presents itself as a restorative answer for the human self as well as the environment at large. The concept of national parks in America grew out of the conservation movement, which began in the nineteenth century and aimed to ensure that America’s greatest natural treasures would be preserved for future generations.38 Particularly John Muir (1838–1914) stressed how the wilderness is necessary for the soul and the environment and so became known the “Father of the National Parks” and a major advocate for the creation of national parks. For Muir, especially the “forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted”39 and the preservation and protection of them are the government’s responsibility. In his case for saving America’s forests, he closes his argument that “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools,—only Uncle Sam can do that”.40 Ultimately, the protection and preservation of forests was included in the Federal Wilderness Act (1964), where forests were declared beneficial areas for the US spirit and were meant to “assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition”.41 The significance of the forest for human benefit as well as nature at large is recognised, however, the still-receding forests pose a threat to the health of the environment and Earth as a whole. Consequently, preservation of the sylvan wilderness, in addition to understanding and educating on the forest’s intricate network, has become a major focus of environmental activism. My study of literary forests, and especially forests of speculative worlds, sets out to help the shift towards such an understanding by providing an eco-sylvan perspective.

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Introduction

THE FORESTS OF THE SPECULATIVE WORLDS: AN ANALYSIS With the notion of the Capitalocene and the dire state of our forests in mind, I will take an environmental approach and investigate the ecocritical representation and material agency of the literary sylvan world and their arboreal characters in primarily British and North American speculative fiction. The rather broadly defined genre as an open field that incorporates all non-mimetic genres, thus providing a departure from a consensus reality, offers a valuable perspective on the environment. According to J. R. R. Tolkien in his influential essay “On Fairy-Stories” (1964), this departure from consensus reality creates an “arresting strangeness”42 for the reader, which Tolkien regards as a great advantage of the genre of fantasy; an effect that can be assigned to the entire field of speculative fiction as well. By departing from our known realities, speculative fiction, such as fantasy, science fiction or alternate history, is able to dismantle existing cultural and power hierarchies and create a distinct and engaging non-human world, which becomes equal to or even more than the human world. In this way, speculative fiction shifts the perspective away from an anthropocentric point of view to centre the non-human world. Despite departing from reality and using defamiliarization, the speculative worlds are founded in our real world and are underlined with familiar concepts that help to ease into the unfamiliar speculative world. Marie-Laure Ryan refers to this idea as the “principle of minimal departure” and indicates that we “construe the world of fiction and of counterfactual as being the closest possible to the reality we know. This means that we will project upon the world of the statement everything we know about the real world”.43 The combination of familiarity and defamiliarization allows for a potent reimagining of our world and an emphasis on the non-human world, such as nature and the environment. Therefore, when it comes to an ecocritical approach, the merit of speculative fiction is precisely its distinctive move away from an anthropocentric perspective towards an understanding of the animism and interconnectivity of the environment by presenting a non-human and ecocentric perspective in the fictional speculative worlds. In Part I of this book, I will focus on the sylvan realm and its arboreal characters specifically and investigate said ecocentric, here sylvan- and arboreal-centric, perspective to highlight the multifaceted concepts of the fictional forests and trees, concepts and ideas that resonate in our nonfictional reality, and their material agencies. The first aspect that I will draw attention to is the representation of the sylvan realm as its own individual and separate world, where the forest is recognised as a significant and healthy ecosystem (chapter 2). Here, the forest’s differing concepts and settings are explored

Introduction

13

and the duality of the forest as a locus terribilis, a haunting wilderness in which the traveller experiences a hostile sylvan agency, and a locus amoenus, a sylvan sanctuary exhibiting a therapeutic sylvan agency that benefits the travellers and its sylvan people, is highlighted. Whereas I initially concentrate on the representation of the sylvan wilderness and sanctuary to deal with the active forest and its distinct sylvan agency, the loss of ancient forests within the speculative worlds provides a crucially important comment on the dire state of the fictional sylvan environment but also highlights the ecocritical situation of our real world. From a cultural and eco-historical perspective, the literary forests as motifs of lost sylvan wilderness or symbols of a lost (sylvan) paradise are highly significant for they postulate an eco-sylvan awareness not just on the fictional level. However, not just the forest represents the various concepts and settings; the individual tree itself provides manifold symbols and emblems (chapter 3). The individual trees hold a remarkable position within human culture and history, as they “have size, longevity, economic usefulness and a profound impact on the landscape—which means that they have entered our culture more thoroughly than most smaller flowering plants”.44 Therefore, I will investigate the tree’s cultural identity by looking at the tree as a marker of place, a monument of time and history as well as the centre of mythology. Although those aspects are relevant for an understanding of the tree’s remarkable position within (fictional) cultures, the most important ecocritical message is the depiction of the dead and/or felled tree as an emblem for humanity’s neglect and excessive abuse of nature, particularly relevant within our current ecological crisis. As already mentioned, speculative fiction defamiliarises something familiar and centres on the non-human world, such as nature. Therefore, I will consider this defamiliarised aspect of nature by investigating the voice as well as agency of the forest and its trees in the concluding chapter of Part I (chapter 4). The furthest deviation from a consensus reality is here recognised in the creation of a distinct arboreal voice as well as arboreal and sylvan agency. First, arboreal characters, such as Tolkien’s Treebeard or Christopher Paolini’s Menoa Tree, become distinct arboreal voices for their respective forests and the environment at large. Yet again, I will argue that deforestation and the felling of individual trees, thus the silencing of nature, presents one of the most evocative ecocritical message within the Capitalocene. Second, by conceptualising the distinct arboreal non-human agent, I will present the forest and its—gradually anthropomorphised—arboreal characters as active agents for their sylvan environment and consequently a potent commentary on the abuse of the sylvan ecosystem.

14

Introduction

Whereas Part I of my analysis focuses particularly on the representation as well as voice and agency of the forests and arboreal characters, Part II investigates the relationship and interaction between the human characters and the sylvan environment as part of an intermeshed network more closely. Even though we encounter a sylvan wilderness separated from cultivated areas in the speculative fictions, the forests of the speculative worlds are constantly in interaction with human characters, be it in the form of travellers, sylvan dwellers or human antagonists to the forest. Consequently, I am going to classify the various human characters’ understanding of and relationship to their respective sylvan realms as a commodity and antagonist (chapter 5) and as a habitat for mythical people and sylvan cultures (chapter 6) as well as realising the cultural and environmental significance of the forest (chapter 7). With the close ecocritical reading of the sylvan realms and arboreal characters of speculative fiction and the (human) characters’ interaction and attitude towards the forests, I want to facilitate an eco-sylvan awareness and an understanding of the particular sylvan and arboreal agency which can help to provide a reconsideration of the material, sylvan, environment and its significance during the ecological crisis of the Capitalocene. NOTES 1. Jim Robbins, The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), xvii–xviii. 2. Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” IGBP— Global Change Newsletter 41 (May 2000): 17–18. http:​//​www​.igbp​.net​/download​/18​ .316f18321323470177580001401​/1376383088452​/NL41​.pdf. 3. Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of µankind,” Nature 415 (January 2002): 23. https:​//​ doi​.org​/10​.1038​/415023a 4. James Syvitski, “Anthropocene: An Epoch of Our Making,” Global Change Issue 78 (March 2012): 13. 5. Jonathan Amos, “The Anthropocene: Canadian Lake Mud ‘Symbolic of Human Changes to Earth,’” BBC Science, July 12, 2023, https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/news​/science​ -environment​-66132769. 6. Greg Garrard, Gary Handwerk and Sabine Wilke, “Imagining Anew: Challenges of Representing the Anthropocene,” Environmental Humanities, vol. 5 (May 2014): 149. 7. Andreas Malm and Alf Hornburg, “The Geology of Mankind?,” The Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (January 2014): 64. 8. Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts, “Inequality and the Global Climate Regime: Breaking the North-South Impasse,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21, no. 4 (December 2008): 623–25.

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9. Zoe Todd, “Indigenizing the Anthropocene,” in Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, ed. Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin (London: Open Humanity Press, 2015), 244. 10. Malm and Hornborg, “The Geology of Mankind?,” 66. 11. Jason W. Moore, “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis,” The Journal of Peasant Studies (March 2017): 15–16, http:​//​dx​ .doi​.org​/10​.1080​/03066150​.2016​.1235036. 12. William Rueckert, “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 107. 13. Cheryll Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harald Fromm (Athens: The University of Georgia, 1996), xviii. 14. Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 17. 15. Buell, Future of Environmental Criticism, 22. 16. Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic, “Guest Editors’ Introduction the Shoulders We Stand on: An Introduction to Ethnicity and Ecocriticism,” MELUS: Multiethnic Literatures of the United States 34, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 6–7, https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​ /stable​/20532676. 17. Ursula K. Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10. 18. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (London: Duke University Press, 2007), 336–37. 19. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, “Introduction to New Materialism,” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 4. 20. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter” in Material Ecocriticism, ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 7. 21. Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 2. 22. Stacy Alaimo, “Trans-corporeality,” in The Posthuman Glossary, ed. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 436. 23. Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 4. 24. Stacy Alaimo, “Trans-Corporeal Feminism and the Ethical Space of Nature,” in Material Feminism, ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 238–39. 25. Pippa Marland, “Ecocriticism,” Literary Compass 10, no. 11 (November 2013): 856; emphasis added. https:​//​doi​.org​/0​.1111​/lic3​.12105. 26. Vicky Kirby, Quantum Anthropologies: Life at Large (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 68–72. 27. Marland, “Ecocriticism,” 857. 28. Coole and Frost, “Introduction to New Materialism,” 10.

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29. “Te Urewera Act 2014,” New Zealand Legislation, last modified October 28, 2021, https:​//​www​.legislation​.govt​.nz​/act​/public​/2014​/0051​/latest​/DLM6183601​ .html. 30. Sullivan, qtd. in Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 6. 31. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 13. 32. Luciana V. Gatti et al., “Amazonia as a Carbon Source Linked to Deforestation and Climate Change,” Nature 595 (July 2021): 388–93. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1038​/ s41586​-021​-03629​-6. 33. David Ellison et al., “Trees, Forests and Water: Cool Insights for a Hot World,” Global Environmental Change 43 (March 2017): 53–56. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​ .gloenvcha. 34. Philippe D. Tortell, “Earth 2020: Science, Society, and Sustainability in the Anthropocene,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 117, no. 16 (April 2020): 8688. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1073​/pnas​.200191911. 35. “Government Forestry and Woodland Policy Statement,” DEFRA—Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, last modified January 2013, https:​ //​assets​.publishing​.service​.gov​.uk​/government​/uploads​/system​/uploads​/attachment​ _data​/file​/221023​/pb13871​-forestry​-policy​-statement​.pdf, 21. 36. David Lowenthal and Hugh C. Prince, “The English Landscape,” The Geographical Review 54, no. 3 (July 1964): 311. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​/212656. 37. “Tree Charter,” Tree Charter, accessed December 05, 2022, https:​//​treecharter​ .uk/. 38. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind Revised Edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 245. 39. John Muir, “The American Forests,” in John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes (January 1897): 145. 40. Muir, “American Forests,” 157. 41. “Wilderness Act,” United States, Public Law 88–577, September 3, 1964, https:​ //​www​.wilderness​.net​/NWPS​/legisact. 42. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (London: Allen & Unwin LTD, 1964), 45. 43. Marie-Laure Ryan, “Fiction, Non-Factuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure,” Poetics 9, no. 4 (August 1980): 406. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.10116​/0304​ -422X(80)90030​-3. 44. Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996), 71.

Chapter One

Theorising the Forest Approaching a Sylvan and Arboreal Agency

SYLVAN AND ARBOREAL AGENCY: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON NATURE’S AGENCY

Material Ecocriticism and Organic Agency Robyn McPhail and David E. Ward comment on the notion of agency understood as an exclusively anthropocentric concept defined by humans’ capability to act independently and make free choices in their work Morality and Agency (1988). They state that: We tend to think that human agents are the only true agents because of the essential link we feel exists between thought and action, properly so called. Thus, animals are regarded as simply behaving when they “act” because we regard them as incapable of thought and therefore somehow governed in their “endeavours” by internal drives whose status as “thoughts” is moot. Again, sticks and stones, considered as agents, are one step lower and “behave” in strict accordance to the laws of nature which are regarded as determining their “endeavours” as if themselves contributed nothing at all to what happens to them.1

This anthropocentric understanding consequently negates an agency of every other life-form, such as the animal kingdom and particularly the natural and material world. In the various fields of animal studies, the anthropocentric idea of agency has long been scrutinised and re-conceptualised to apply to the animal kingdom and material ecocriticism, as I have already touched upon in the previous section, dismantles the stringent anthropocentric notion as well to define an agency of matter and nature. 17

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First, I would like to highlight that nature needs to be understood as a living organism with the potential of agency. James Lovelock already accredited a form of agency to Earth when he proposed his Gaia hypothesis in the early 1970s. Lovelock argues that Earth is alive because of the interaction of the living organisms with its inorganic surroundings, such as the Earth’s atmosphere. In that way, they build a self-regulating and self-organised complex system, which maintains and controls the overall conditions for life on Earth. Revising his initial hypothesis in his second book The Ages of Gaia (1988), Lovelock draws on new scientific research and identifies Gaia/Earth as the “largest manifestation of life”.2 As everything on Gaia, the non-living and the living matter, is enclosed by the Earth’s atmosphere, everything is alive and becomes part of the living organism, where a distinction is only made in terms of intensity. What is more, Lovelock considers life to be social and therefore everything is part of a collective, of a community. The notion that everything is alive in some manner and especially interconnects with the surrounding living and non-living matter criticises the hierarchical binary system of culture and nature and establishes, what Timothy Morton calls, an “ecological thought.” Morton argues in his work The Ecological Thought (2010) that everything, every life and material form, is interconnected in an intricate and vast network, which infiltrates all areas of life. Morton’s ecological thought is therefore an ecological mind-set; it is “the thinking of interconnectedness. The ecological thought is a thought about ecology, but it’s also a thinking that is ecological. Thinking the ecological thought is part of an ecological project”.3 Morton’s ecological thought on the interconnectivity of all life-forms and material objects furthermore supports the conceptualisation of a material agency within the discipline of material ecocriticism. Material ecocriticism draws particularly from ecofeminist approaches, where the notion of hierarchical power between man/culture and woman/nature is deconstructed and the feminist recognition of, in Donna Haraway’s words, “actors who come in many and wonderful forms”4 is applied to the notion of agency of nature as well. Thus, as I have already outlined in the introduction, Marland ascribes agency to all matter and Alaimo demands an acknowledgment of material agency, which leads to a shift away from an anthropocentric worldview and a new understanding of materiality. Towards the end of the last century, social theorists such as Bruno Latour as well as Michel Callon and John Law, among others, challenged the prevalent notion of agency as an inherently anthropomorphic concept and started to establish a new form of agency that included nature. Latour attempts in his work We Have Never Been Modern (original Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, 1991) to dismantle the rigid distinction between nature and culture by arguing that the modernist nature-culture dichotomy has never really existed. Latour begins his reflection with news

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19

on the hole in the ozone layer—an apt example of the Capitalocene—as well as on the AIDS virus, a story about computer chips, the debate about frozen embryos, devastating forest fires and so forth. Latour highlights here the problem of seeing these phenomena and material things from only one angle, economics, politics, science etc., and not as an intricate network and thus attempts to “retie the Gordian knot by crisscrossing . . . the divide that separates exactly knowledge and the exercise of power—let us say nature and culture”.5 In his examples of occurrences and things, Latour emphasises that those are not merely material or phenomenological objects but hybrids between culture and nature and suggests, consequently, reassessing the constitution and definition of modernity itself. In his closing remarks, he claims we must conceive a “Parliament of Things,” in which culture, nature, and their discourse, each represented by delegates, are recognised as hybrids that are created through the interaction of culture, humans, and nature, material objects. Ultimately, Latour entrusts us with the task of providing rights to those hybrids, as “neither Nature nor the Others will become modern. It is up to us to change our ways of changing”.6 As can be seen, the nature-culture dichotomy with its hierarchical structure and power relations is challenged in various models of social theory, which argue for the recognition of a new form of agency found in matter. Michel Callon and John Law additionally discuss in their article “Agency and the Hybrid Collective,” published in Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory (1997), whether non-humans can ever be considered agents and come to the understanding that they can. They state that “agency is an emergent property” and that it is “a form of action which derives from an arrangement”7, thus, they highlight that agency happens through the intricate relations between non-human and human as a hybrid collective. In their chapter, Callon and Law comment on the anthropocentric notion of agency within contemporary Western culture, with its central condition of language use and intentionality, but conclude with the notion that agency “comes in all kinds of forms. And some, though only some, we can imagine. Others, no doubt we will never know. Which means that there are multiform kinds of agency: forms of agency that we can’t imagine; forms of agency performed in patterns of translation that are foreign to us; forms of agency that are, for instance, nonstrategic, distributed, and decentered”.8 I will come back to this notion when discussing the idea of a sylvan and arboreal agency as one kind of agency that shows a pattern foreign to us whose particular language we have to comprehend. One influential re-evaluation of the concept of agency as a non-stringently anthropocentric concept is the strands of Actor Network Theory (ANT), which originated in science and technology studies in the early 1980s, but has been applied in various interdisciplinary fields of social sciences since

20

Chapter One

then as well. As the term suggests, ANT places everything and everyone in a relationship to each other, forming a network of various actors. Thus, one of the central aspects of ANT is the recognition of the non-human agency as a vital aspect of the interrelationship between nature and society. Latour comments on ANT in his Reassembling the Social (2005), in which he focuses on the agency of matter and objects and the interrelationship between them once more. In the first part of this work, he discusses five sources of uncertainties about the social world, with the first three being particularly relevant for my analysis. First, Latour proposes that there is no group, but only group formation, which are constantly made and reorganised, and that society is held together by those ever-changing and fragile group formations. The second source of uncertainty addresses the notion that action is overtaken and depends on multiple actors. We shape and are shaped by group formation and consequently we are not performing in a vacuum where our actions are transparent. In contrast, Latour states that ANT wishes to inherit the notion that action is “overtaken . . . it is taken up by others and shared with the masses. It is mysteriously carried out and at the same time distributed to others”.9 Latour’s third source of uncertainty now attributes agency to material objects by stating that anything modifying a state of affair is acting. Arguing that the types of actors are expanded in ANT, Latour explores the actions of material objects—the kettle “boils” water, the hammer “hits” nails on the head or the soap “takes” dirt away—and asks the question whether those verbs do not designate action and how this realisation can bring a new understanding to the social sciences.10 He makes clear that within the former anthropocentric reading of action and agency, which is predominantly characterised through intentionality, the actions of material objects, such as the kettle or the hammer, can hardly be recognised as agency. Latour states “they might exist in the domain of ‘material’ ‘causal’ relations, but not in the ‘reflexive’ ‘symbolic’ domain of social relations”.11 However, we should focus on the fact that any material object “does modify a state of affairs by making a difference [and so can be seen as] an actor—or, if it has no figuration yet, an actant”.12 Consequently, our kettle does change the water temperature and is thus an actant with its own agency. Latour argues in his two final sources of uncertainty that social sciences should shift from matters of facts to concentrate on “matters of concern” which “allow us to renew from top to bottom the very scene of empiricism—and hence the divide between “natural” and “social”.13 Lastly, Latour states that sociologists should not try to shift from description to explanation when writing down risky accounts. Latour comments here on the methodology of studies and the representation of discoveries, where a good textual account is “one that traces a network . . . [thus] a string of actions in which each participant is treated as a full-blown mediator”.14 Latour’s

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21

account on the concerns of ANT within social studies highlights the reconsideration of the material world with its own form of agency and emphasises the inter- and intra-relational network between humans and the material world. ANT regards the human as well as the non-human agent as equals and thus aims at a recognition of this concept and an analytical treatment of all participating agents as equally significant.15 Levelling the human and the non-human agent deconstructs the hierarchical structure of agency as an inherently human concept. Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris recognise in their introduction to their anthology Material Agency (2008) the potentiality of reading this notion as an attempt to resolve the prevalent discussion concerning the opposing concepts of agency and structure in social theory. Consequently, ANT provides a relational network in which agency is not considered to be an inherently anthropocentric concept but can also be found in material culture. An environmental reflection of material agency establishes materiality, stated by Iovino, as “the condition through which bodies act with and relate with each other, shaping other bodies; it is the condition whereby the health of living beings is mirrored and mutually determined by the ecological balances or imbalances of their environments”.16 Thus, especially nature, is not a static concept but evolves as a dynamic and generative (organic) material. For Iovino consequently: the turn to the “material” potentially brings ecocriticism not only “beyond nature writing,” but also “beyond nature,” namely beyond a vision associating nature by and large with human-centered and often dualistic concepts such as the “other-than-culture,” “wilderness,” or the “environment.” In this vision, the notion of ‘environment’ (a surrounding materiality in which individuals beings arise) is displaced by the interplay of material subjects. For material ecocriticism “nature” is rather equated with substance, the nature of things, and a continuing process of dynamic materialization and differentiation over time and space.17

Establishing a Sylvan and Arboreal Agency The question that I would like to address in my book is now: How can the theoretical trend of a material agency ultimately be applied to a concrete agency of a particular organic matter; more precisely, what might the specific agency of trees, their arboreal agency, or even entire forests, sylvan agency, be? For the conceptualisation of said sylvan and arboreal agency, I will first draw on the study by Owain Jones and Paul Cloke in their book Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in Their Place (2002), in which they investigate and discuss the question of the tree’s agency, and later expand their concept for my own study. Jones and Cloke’s aim is to deconstruct the stringent notion

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Chapter One

of human agency with references to different streams within social theories, such as ANT, and conceptualise a working framework for an arboreal agency. To move away from an anthropocentric agency and ontology, their research explores interconnections between individual trees and their respective places and how they both shape each other. This examination leads to four ways of action in which a particular arboreal agency can be detected: agency as a routine action, as transformative action, as purposive action, as well as recognising agency in (non-) reflexive actions. Routine Sylvan Agency First, Jones and Cloke scrutinise the predefined anthropocentric distinction between a routine action, which is considered merely mechanical, and a transformative action, which produces something new and is thus regarded creative. Because of this distinction, transformative actions appear to exhibit a higher form of agency and thus simultaneously deny routine actions any agency. Jones and Cloke challenge this presumption by stating that even routine actions can be creative when considered in the appropriate frame of time and scale, as natural processes create everything. By investigating Donald Culross Peattie’s example of the routine action performed by chlorophyll, they demonstrate the elaborated interconnectivity of all things and life-forms and effectively reveal that even in the presumably tiniest routine actions a creative agency can be found.18 Thus, agency in general is not an independent and autonomous process, as well as the individual is not autonomous, but both are connected and in relation to the particular environment. Transformative Sylvan Agency Routine actions of trees are creative, yet can they be as creative as transformative actions as well? More precisely, can the non-human world transform and alter formations and spaces, too? At first glance, transformative actions seem to be reserved for human actions alone. Examples of reforestation programmes, as can be seen in the recent attempt to restore a temperate rainforest on the Beara Peninsula on the south-west coast of Ireland, clearly speak of human intent and thus human agency. Jones and Cloke, however, highlight the relationality between human intent and the tree’s specific abilities. Even in cases where humans plant trees, the tree’s own agency is therefore recognised. Nevertheless, it is not only through human’s planning that trees transform spaces, trees also act autonomous and seed themselves in various spaces. Those actions are considered creative and transformative by Jones and Cloke, as the trees reshape the physical landscape of a space, and often its

Theorising the Forest

23

cultural and social, and even economic, landscape as well. Expanding this ability beyond the single arboreal agency, the forest as an ecosystem consequently can exhibit a transformative agency, too, by reclaiming abandoned spaces. The transformation of the de-industrialised Black Country region in England’s West Midlands or the region around Chernobyl years after the nuclear disaster of 1986 are good examples for this phenomenon. Not planned by anyone else, nature starts to come back initiated by an arboreal agency and expanded into a sylvan agency. Consequently, Jones and Cloke rightly summarise that the “agency of trees is not merely subordinate to a more powerful and distinct form of human agency; it can also be an unruly other force”.19 Nature is constantly on the advance reconquering and reclaiming any space that might have been left unattended by humans. Purposive Sylvan Agency Nature reclaiming spaces with trees seeding themselves in abandoned buildings is a compelling sight and a potent image in literature as well. However, it raises the question of intentionality, a fundamental aspect in the traditional idea of agency. The dominating but narrow philosophical approach to agency, with intentional and conscious actions at its centre, apparently leaves almost no room for the non-human world to be considered as agents as well; although the question of intentional actions has been applied and adapted to some non-human agents, in particular animal agents, too. The German forester and author Peter Wohlleben effectively explores and illustrates arboreal agency on various levels, such as an agency defined as purposive action in the tree’s sprouting, in his groundbreaking book The Hidden Life of Trees (original Das Geheime Leben der Bäume, 2015).20 Wohlleben explains that, whereas some seeds sprout immediately when spring comes, other seeds have the possibility to wait a year or more before germinating.21 This seems to suggest an arboreal agency in which the best possible outcome for the growing of a tree is put into consideration by the material agent. However, ascribing deliberate and intentional actions, such as the tree’s own seeding in particular places, to the natural and material world comparable to human’s intentional actions seems to be implausible. To bypass the stringent and difficult to certify intentionality in non-human agencies and simultaneously avoiding the question of essentialist naturalism, Jones and Cloke propose a shift away from the idea of intentionality towards a recognition of purposeful actions. They claim “that non-human agents exercise not intentional but purposive agency at a certain level and in a certain way, which may become creative or transformative in particular circumstances. By this [they] mean that there can be some direction and purpose in the being and becoming of agents such as trees which reflects a certain

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Chapter One

course of future action”.22 With this reading of non-human actions, the idea and issue of the consciousness of the non-human, and particularly organic or material, agents is evaded and a focus is laid on the outcome and natural intentions and purpose of the tree’s actions and its life-cycle. Additionally, the individual actions of the natural world are valued in their own rights and outside of any, anthropocentrically perceived, intentions. This is also stated by Robin Attfield in his article “The Good of Trees” (1981): All individual animals and plants have latent tendencies at some time or other, all have a direction of growth, and all can flourish after their natural kind. There is no need to hold that trees have unconscious goals to the reach the conclusion that trees have interests; indeed, where nothing counts as a conscious goal it is hard to see how anything counts as an unconscious one either. The growth and thriving of trees does not need to be regarded as a kind of wanting, nor trees as a possible object of sympathy, for us to recognise that they too have a good of their own.23

The recognition of those latent tendencies and interests of trees shows their possibility of agency without the concern of anthropomorphising the tree. Consequently, nature and trees are examined and recognised within their own natural, biological and environmental, position and their actions are not defined through an anthropomorphic concept but acknowledged as actions with a particularly natural purpose. (Non-)Reflexive Sylvan Agency As their fourth and final argument for an arboreal agency, Jones and Cloke investigate the aspect of (non-)reflexive actions as another essential part of agency. Closely linked to intentionality, premediated and deliberate actions are considered features of solely human agency and thus not observable in non-human and especially material agents. Therefore, under the highly philosophical concept of free will, the carefully consideration of how, whether and when to act in a particular way is not recognised as a feature of non-human agency as such. Nevertheless, developments in non-representational theories provide a more comprehensive approach to agency by arguing that human actions and their agency is not always intentional but often “entangled with the unconscious, the subconscious, the habitual, the accidental and the spontaneous”.24 As a result, the distinction and boundary between human and nonhuman agency becomes less clear, too. When investigating this aspect, particular actions of trees can be classified as purposive and (non-)reflexive as well. Deciduous trees, for example, have the ability to coordinate when to start their seeding, relying on the

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right timing. Furthermore, the tree’s metabolism adapts when confronted with environmental changes. For Jones and Cloke, two significant notions for non-human agency derive from this thought proposed in non-relational theory: “First, the socio-ecological world exhibits incredible creativity, and creative potentials, and non-human agents fully participate in creative becoming and being”.25 These observations reveal a re-evaluation of agency and provide the possibility of a non-human creativity and agency. Intra- and Interrelational Sylvan Agency Jones and Cloke investigate and conceptualise the organic agency of trees, which is characterised through routine, transformative, purposive and (non-)reflexive actions. However, I would like to go further in deconstructing the notion of agency and include the consideration of a sylvan agency, the organic agency of the entire sylvan ecosystem, to the already established arboreal agency. Jones and Cloke’s explorative focus is on specific “tree-places” and omits, although acknowledges, the larger scale of forests and their impact and relation to other networks. Therefore, I propose two more ways in which the, especially, sylvan agency but also arboreal agency can be recognised: sylvan agency can additionally be expressed through intra- and interrelational actions as well as actions on a physical and/or psychological level. As ANT suggests, everything and everyone exists within interconnected networks with the various agents affecting each other on multiple levels. Consequently, it is clear that the various agents and their agency are governed by a network of cooperation and collaboration. Within the ecosystem of a forest, numerous agents or actants correlate to each other and work together to maximise their productivity or their chance of survival. The forest as a vital and complex ecosystem thus offers its flora and fauna a vibrant place for various life forms and cycles. Forest ecology studies these interrelated practices and patterns of flora and fauna in the ecosystem forest. The trees clustered within a forest are profoundly interconnected, particularly through their roots, which are the most significant part of the tree and build its “brain”; they rely on each other to provide a healthy ecosystem. On an arboreal level for example, trees are able to synchronise their process of photosynthesis to level their productivity and become equally sufficient. Trees in a forest system communicate with each other, support struggling or sick trees by sharing nutrients and warn each other of impending dangers via chemicals. However, intra-relational actions within the forest are not limited to an interconnection between trees but can also be found between different sylvan species, flora and fauna. Various forms of symbiosis exist within the forest, such as between trees and fungi. Both organisms, the tree and the fungus, provide

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something valuable for the other and so both profit from a close interrelationship. Therefore, we can speak of an intra-relational sylvan agency, when discussing the various interactions between actants (trees, fungi, etc.) within the ecosystem forest. Interconnectivity does, however, not only exist within the sylvan network but goes beyond the individual ecosystem and includes the interrelationship between the forest and further networks and agents. Therefore, an interrelational sylvan agency can be examined as well. As a complex and interconnected living ecosystem, forests hold a vital position within the wider context of the environment, because they are the most crucial provider of habitats allowing biological diversity and thus offer a wide range of genetic information. Furthermore, forests act as regulators for the global and local climate by lowering temperatures and prevent soil erosion, hill slope failure and downstream sedimentation.26 A sylvan interrelational agency is thus revealed in the individual tree’s routine and purposive actions united within a healthy forest, especially concerning the performance of photosynthesis, which are essential for the survival of all life-forms. Hostile and Therapeutic Sylvan Agency The forest’s interrelational actions function on an ecological scale, producing photosynthesis or transforming the physical landscape. Moreover, the forest can have a psychological as well as physiological effect on the human mind and the body. Consequently, a physical/psychological sylvan agency can be identified as the sixth and final form of sylvan agency. Stemming from a paradoxical relationship to the forest defined through a historical and cultural attitude towards it, the forest can influence the individual human on a physical as well as psychological, and thus on a cognitive, level and become either a dangerous territory or a restorative realm. The primal forest is the most classical depiction and idea of a dangerous and dark wilderness. Although a factual threat especially in more primal times and/or more remote regions, the forest as a locus terribilis, as a menacing wilderness filled with monstrous others, has primarily been redefined as a narrative concept of Western folklore and myth and, through this, has become a cognitive concept as well (see following chapter). The ominous presence of a primal forest untouched by humans, its darkness and its ability to disorient and hide potential predators, effects the human psyche and evokes a disquieting sensation in the traveller. The forest therefore presents itself as a perceived threat through its particular hostile sylvan agency. This hostile agency functions mainly on a psychological level and thus might primarily be recognised as a cognitive concept or idea embedded in a cultural memory and not as an actual sylvan agency in the sense that the

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forest itself performs a form of hostility towards the traveller on some level. Nevertheless, as material ecocriticism deconstructs and redefines the previously inherently anthropocentric notion of agency to include material agents and their distinctive form of agency, and, as the factual threat of disorientation, of going astray or attacks from predators does remain, the idea of a hostile forest cannot simply be reduced to a social construct but is ultimately also a factual element of the natural forest as well. Consequently, I argue that the, especially primal, forest exhibits a hostile sylvan agency because it is the material agent that does act upon another agent, in this case the human traveller, on a physical as well as psychological level by providing an unstructured natural wilderness filled with predators and an ominous presence in which the human traveller is the alien and the forest the performing entity. As previously mentioned, the forest is a complex ecosystem that does not only provide an antagonistic agency but also offers a restorative and beneficial atmosphere, on a physical as well as psychological level, and thus we can identify a therapeutic sylvan agency as well. The forest as a restorative realm is a therapeutic landscape, a landscape “where the physical and built environments, social conditions and human perceptions combine to produce an atmosphere which is conducive to healing”.27 Wilbert Gesler explores the therapeutic value of certain landscapes and places within cultural geography and discusses the long tradition of utilising the healing powers of the physical environment, in particular its medical plants but also the uncontaminated water and air in the countryside and wilderness regions, for medical and physical benefits. In addition to these physical benefits, therapeutic landscapes furthermore have a profoundly positive effect on the human psyche and its picturesque landscape is valued as a mental retreat. The healthy forest provides such a therapeutic landscape for body and soul. As a therapeutic landscape, the forest’s healing qualities are primarily comprised of its clean and fresh air, especially through high oxygen level due to photosynthesis, and its natural tranquillity, by shutting out the hectic everyday world. This positive effect is widely and systematically used for medical aid, so for example in the Shinrin-yoku movement, also known as “forest bathing.” Originally coined and established by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 1982, shinrin-yoku is described as “making contact with and taking in the atmosphere of the forest”.28 Japanese studies have investigated the various benefits of spending time in a forest environment and consequently provided a rich body of scientific literature on this particular subject. Their studies show in general that the forest environment can help the human body to relax by reducing the cortisol level, by lowering blood pressure, pulse rate and sympathetic nerve activity, and by raising natural killer cell activity and improving heart rate variability. Furthermore,

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the forest does not only have a direct positive effect on the human body, it can also calm the mind and so work on a psychological level. Particularly in times of crisis, the tranquillity of the forest and its natural beauty can reduce the stress level and increase mental well-being. During the COVID-19 pandemic, therapeutic walking in the woods has increased exponentially in Germany for example, where the solitude of the forest, the Waldeinsamkeit, brings peace and comfort in an otherwise strenuous pandemic life.29 There is no doubt that the forest with its trees is intrinsically valuable for the environment, yet also positively affects the human body and soul, especially when juxtaposed to a hectic city life. The forest and its trees, consequently, demonstrate a strong and significant therapeutic agency, which benefits humans greatly on both physical and psychological levels. Thus, the intrinsic value of the forest for the environment and Earth in general, for all its human and material inhabitants, needs to be realised on a grand scale in the recent Anthropocene. To sum up, it becomes clear that trees as well as forests can be considered agents and exhibit a particular material/organic agency once the narrow anthropocentric understanding of agency is re-conceptualised. As actors in a network, trees and forests display an arboreal and sylvan agency in the form of routine, transformative, purposive, (non-)reflexive as well as (inter- / intra-) relational actions. Furthermore, the forest in particular does have a physical and psychological effect on the individual human through its hostile agency and, in direct contrast, its therapeutic agency. With this inclusive approach to a formerly inherently anthropomorphic concept, the intrinsic value and performance of the tree and the forest is presented and aids in the shift towards an ecocentric and environmentally friendly perspective. SYLVAN WILDERNESS AND ITS HOSTILE AGENCY The Idea of an Antagonistic Sylvan Wilderness One of the most prominent and oldest perception of the forest in, especially northern, European cultures is linked to the idea of the wilderness, an uncultivated land where wild animals reside and the absence of men is assumed. The sylvan realm is such a primordial image of uncultivated wilderness and thus seen initially as a threat and antagonist to human communities. Characterised as a dark and primal space filled with dangerous creatures, the forest stands in strong opposition to civilisation and its developing cities. One of the earliest uses of the term wilderness, developed in large part from Teutonic and Norse languages, is found in the eighth-century epic Beowulf, where “wildēor” is used to reference the wild, unruly and fantastic animals (“dēor” meaning

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animal in Old English) roaming the landscapes, especially the forests, of pagan Scandinavia.30 However, the first written account of the forest as a clear antagonist for the human hero is found in the ancient legend of Gilgamesh, the earliest surviving literary text. The semi-mythic Sumerian king of Uruk Gilgamesh, who lived during the Early Dynastic II period around 2700 BCE, decides to embark on a journey into the dense cedar forest to cut down timber for personal glory and a place in history. In this epic, the cedar forest is represented and protected by the forest god Huwawa, whose head Gilgamesh symbolically cuts off and so deforests great areas of the cedar forest. The forest with its god Huwawa is governed by an ancient natural law and is therefore clearly contrasted against Gilgamesh and the walled city Uruk with its laws of civilisation. In the end, it is civilisation, in form of Gilgamesh, who wins over the forest, here represented by the forest god Huwawa. As a dangerous antipode to civilisation, the primal forests are the greatest antagonists and constantly beyond control. Thus, human societies began to see the forest as a wild space to be feared and finally to be conquered and utilised for the rise of civilisation. During antiquity, most of Europe was densely forested and its civilisations had to clear space within the forest in order to build their communities. Giambattista Vico highlights the fact that the forest was there before the rise of humanity and organises human institutions accordingly in his work The New Sciences (1744). For Vico “the forests came first, then the hovels, next the fields, flocks and herds, followed by the cities, the nations and, finally, the philosophers”.31 As a landscape of origin, the primeval forest was the habitat of Vico’s giants, descendants of Noah roaming the forests after the great flood. Within the forest, the sky is hidden and any further sights limited. However, with the first thunder and lightning, the giants became conscious of the sky and assigned meaning to it as the animated entity of Jove, who later reigns as Zeus and Jupiter. This picturing of an abstract idea seemed to give birth to the first mental thoughts, which led to the giants becoming aware of the world and perceiving the forest as an obstacle in their communication with Jove. Humanity, therefore, cleared parts of the forest and built their communities in those free places surrounded by wilderness and its primal predators. The obstruction of the sky by the tree’s foliage has since a profound effect on the cultural concept of the forest. The forest as a wilderness evidently represents the realm that stands in opposition and contrast to the civilised world. Although humanity has its origin in the forest, people started clearing spaces to conquer wild nature in order to build their communities and develop their culture. One prominent civilisation that is founded within the forest and later stands in contrast to it is ancient Rome. Rome’s founding father Romulus is connected to the forest in more than one way. As the son of Rhea Silva, Romulus is of the Sylvian

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family (his ancestor Silvius was born in the forest). He was set out in the forest, mothered by a she-wolf and eventually taken in by a herdsman to be raised in the forest of Latium. Though Rome’s founding myth connects it to the forest, the forest around Rome was seen as “a place which, by definition, was ‘outside’ (foris) the writ of their law and the governance of their state”.32 Consequently, “in the forest one was no one—nemo. The res nullius stood over against the res publica in such a way that a sylvan fringe gave the civic space its natural boundaries”.33 The opposing laws within the two environments are again taken up in literature and the arts during the Renaissance, where the forest displays a contrasting world to the English court, as can be seen in William Shakespeare’s plays. Here, the forest represents a world in which the laws of culture are primarily reversed and juxtaposed with ancient natural laws. Dangerous and magical creatures roam the wild forests and cultural concepts within the sylvan realm are annihilated, as there is “no clock in the forest”.34 It is, however, not only the sylvan realm itself and its inhabitants that represent antagonistic agency, human behaviour is additionally stripped of civilised custom and law. In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1588/1593) especially, the forest outside of Rome becomes a place of sheer violence when Chiron and Demetrius agree to kill Bassianus and rape and mutilate his betrothed Lavinia. Shakespeare’s sylvan realms represent places in which the laws of the civilised world are countered by ancient laws of nature as well as disobeyed by antagonistic characters, who use the sylvan realm as a place of concealment for their crimes. Nevertheless, the reversal of civilised laws and the upholding of natural and primitive laws in the sylvan realm additionally help to uncover certain truths, a particular freedom or even justice. Shakespeare’s plays often present this constructive contrast between the forest and the court and show the forest as a refuge from the corrupt life at court. The Forest of Arden provides the banished Duke Senior with a safe place and nourishment after he has been chased away by his usurping brother Duke Frederick in As You Like It (1599), and Valentine becomes king of the outlaws after his banishment from court in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589–1593). As I have outlined in the introduction, the English woodlands had long lost their true wilderness connotation. The New World however brought back the fear of the sylvan antagonist for early European settlers. Arriving from heavily deforested Europe in the seventeenth century, the settlers were again confronted with a vast and wild nature, particularly in the form of forests. As Roderick Nash points out in his influential Wilderness and the American Mind (1967), this, sylvan, frontier was once again an overarching threat to the very survival of the European idea of human civilisation and had to be conquered and civilised. The antagonistic position of the sylvan wilderness is distinctively expressed in the numerous records of the early settler period

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where it is labelled an “enemy” to be “vanquished” and “subdued”.35 Similar to the early epics such as Gilgamesh, the American pioneers thus saw in the forest a wilderness to be mastered and, at the same time, a last bastion of individualism and heroism. The sylvan wilderness became a significant and welcomed challenge and provided a purpose for the pioneer’s life. In this sense, the frontier life with its antagonistic, sylvan, wilderness to be conquered represents an ideological and romanticised foundation for the building of an American nation. American historian Frederick Jackson Turner declares that “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream; it was not carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier”.36 Therefore, the concept of the antagonistic wilderness, with the forest as its prototypical realm, and the taming of such plays a significant role in American history and contributes greatly to the development of an American identity. Hostile Sylvan Agency: A Place to Fear The forest as a wilderness and dissociation from civilisation reveals the initial perception of the dark forest as a place of confusion and danger to be feared. The concept of the wilderness as a space of threat for individuals and humanity is a prominent aspect of nature and likewise found in the cognitive perception of the forest, conceptualised as the (psychological) hostile sylvan agency. Fear of the forest can be characterised in various ways, such as getting lost and never finding your way out again, encountering primal animals or associating the forest with a place of crime (therefore linked to human lawlessness). This primal instinct is pervasive in Western consciousness and has always been a vital aspect and an archetypal narrative trope in various domains of the arts, especially in literature. Besides the antagonistic forest in the Gilgamesh epic, the earliest literal encounter of the forest of fear can be found in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno at the beginning of his The Divine Comedy (ca. 1320), where the traveller finds himself lost in a dark forest: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear.37

Dante’s traveller begins his journey towards redemption in the dark and treacherous forest, the selva oscura (Ital. “dark forest”). The forest is

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here part of a Christian allegory and so its analysis becomes treacherous with the forest representing more than just the natural/sylvan environment. Nevertheless, humanity’s profound anxiety about the primal forest is explicitly defined in this narrative poem. Dante’s traveller has already found his way out of the forest, yet the memory of it still haunts him in his now safe place. In this case, the forest as wilderness and a threat is defined through its density and ruggedness, which obstructs the view of the sky and hinders anyone from walking in a straight line. The idea of being without orientation within the forest can be transferred to a cognitive state of being lost within your own psyche as well. In Dante’s allegory, the traveller has to make his way through the selva oscura, through his own moral confusion and guilt, in order to emerge from this wilderness and transcendent to a higher spiritual place.38 In terms of the general wilderness idea, the terrifying forest has to be left behind in order to come back to the safe place of civilisation. The loss of direction and orientation is one of the most prominent sensations felt and dreaded when entering an unknown and dense forest. This primal fear is linked to childhood memories and worries of being left behind in a strange and bewildering space—a fear that is presented in the fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel” (1812) by the Brothers Grimm for instance. In their folktales, the forest is a clear antagonistic environment, where one might encounter evil witches, large predators such as the wolf or bear, and where one has to overcome their primal fear as well as solve a set task as an initiation ritual. Predominantly, entering the forest is accompanied by a warning—to not stray off the path, to not talk to anyone, and so forth—given by an older and wiser character highlighting the dangers of the primal wilderness and, simultaneously, transferring the physical threat to a psychological anxiety. After spending a substantial time within an ancient forest, the increasing anxiety about getting lost paired with a sense of uneasiness about potential hidden predators can have an impact on the individual’s mind and ultimately culminate in losing oneself. In this regard, the forest and the individual’s perception of it can play a trick on the human psyche and reveal the negative and frenzied part of human nature triggered by the hostile sylvan agency. It is not only the loss of orientation and subsequently the loss of one’s mind that generate a discomfort within the sylvan realm; the forest additionally is feared because of what it potentially conceals. In addition to the classical wilderness ideal with wild predators lurking in the undergrowth, the forest is identified as an enchanted space for the supernatural and the Other. The Other represents a menacing force that stands in contrast to humanity. With its supernatural powers, the Other demonstrates the inferiority of humans and their culture within the dangerous unknown forest. This separation from humanity is furthermore embodied in the forest itself, which can be identified as the counterpart to civilisation, and thus the forest itself is feared. Iris

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Gassenbauer outlines, in addition to other functions of the forest in literature (as a dissociation from civilisation and a place for the mythical Other), this contrasting idea of the forest by defining the forest as either a locus terribilis or a locus amoenus: 3. The absence of structure and the presence of the Other functions as a locus terribilis. The Monstrous lingers inside the nature space and motivates a storyline which conjures horror. The mystical threat, as well as the menacing nature, takes over to underline human inferiority. . . . 4. Depending on the genre, the absence of structure and the presence of Other also functions as the locus amoenus which offers a secret hideaway. In this case, the forest displays a pure and cathartic shelter which allows the characters to withdraw from society.39

As a contrast to civilised places, the forest consequently also serves as an escape from society and its rigid structures and laws which can be seen in the legends of Robin Hood or in Shakespeare’s plays where the forest is oftentimes the merry sanctuary where the characters can live free (for a time) from the confining court. The already discussed natural and primal order of the forest as opposing the social order of the city and civilisation can likewise enhance the feeling of freedom and provide the individual with a place of rest and comfort. I will discuss this positive connotation and the therapeutic effect and agency of the forest in the following chapter. SYLVAN SANCTUARY AND ITS THERAPEUTIC AGENCY The Mythical Forest in (Western) Literature Since forests are regarded as one of the oldest environments, which have been around almost forever, they have been believed to contain wild and strange creatures from the dawn of time. The forest is linked to the otherworld and various ideas of ancient spirits, the land of the faeries or spaces of myths and folktales. In many cultures, folk traditions closely link the monstrous and the supernatural to the sylvan world. Therefore, the wild and uncultivated primal forest is not simply an antagonistic wilderness but it additionally represents a space full of the marvellous and the supernatural. Its incoherence and notion of strangeness thus establishes the forest as an ideal setting for the unknown Other and mythical creatures, especially in narrations of fantasy and the supernatural. As Gassenbauer states, “the forest offers—due to its given disorganized constitution—a setting where the mystical Other that functions

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as a catalyst for the development of the characters as well as the storyline, spreads. At the same time, it establishes an excluded area which allows the hero to cross boundaries and therefore initiate the sujet (Lotman 330), a significant event”.40 From this statement, it becomes clear that the forest does not only provide a physical location for the overall narration; it is additionally established as a separate realm contrasting the orderly and structured world of civilised cultures. The forest in many narratives functions as a vital element in which the storyline is driven onwards and the characters are challenged. Disconnected from the world of humans who live in communities in a cultivated environment, the forests of fantasy and mythology “contain what is left of an even older, more mythical and by all means more magical form of narrative material”.41 In that sense, the forest seems not to be the enchanted subject itself but offers the space where enchantment and the magical can take place. Enchantment can take various shapes and forms: the forest of Arcadia in Roman and Greek culture both provide a habitat for the mythological creature Pan and the satyrs, for example. A further sylvan deity is the Greek huntress Artemis, who is said to roam the wild forests and protect the beasts of the wild. Worshipped during antiquity as “the womb of the world,” Artemis is also perceived as the forest as such, as an unapproachable mother and, at the same time, huntress of the wild creatures.42 The forest as a secretive and mysterious space is additionally associated with the realm of the Faerie. Shakespeare’s forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/1596) is such a sylvan habitat for the fairy folk, where the likes of Oberon, Titania and Puck transform the forest into a magical land. The fairies countermand order by toying with the young lovers and so creating confusion and disorder in the nocturnal forest. With all these connotations and associations, the forest becomes an archetype of the mythical realm significant in narratives of fantasy and the otherworld. In legends and folktales, with the most prominent examples being the Children’s and Household Tales (original Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1812–1858) by the Brothers Grimm, the forest predominantly occupies a similar narrative mode as the dark and perilous forest and, yet again, stands in opposition to the places of society. As a secluded environment, the forest of folklore and fairy tale is often seen as a border space between the mortal world and the otherworld full of enchantment and magical creatures. As I mentioned before, the forest here is, in general, a space of danger. However, besides being the opposing space for civilisation and culture, the forests of legends and folklore are closely connected to the cultural heritage of their environment same as the religious/spiritual forest and thus harbour cultural memory, too. Robert Pogue Harrison, in Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992), situates these forests within the realm of nostalgia due to their emotional link to an imagined past. For this reason, the folklore forest establishes itself as a figure of memory that is characterised by an atmosphere of lost

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origins.43 The illustration of the fairy tale/folklore forests consequently mirrors the particular cultural mind towards nature and their past. The Forest as a Cultural Legend and Heritage As a particular space and idea of cultural heritage, forests become settings of cultural-historical icons. Such a sylvan heritage is Sherwood Forest, the greenwood of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, which is deeply engraved in the cultural heritage of the English consciousness. Yet, it has also expanded as a legend in Western culture in general. Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire holds different meanings and values throughout its history. Charles Watkins illustrates in his research Trees, Woods and Forests (2014) these changing concepts of the forest in English history and culture, with its universal recognition and popularity through Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820). According to Watkins, Scott’s Ivanhoe establishes “the most famous imaginative historical forest in the world”44 as the setting for the meeting between Richard I (1157–1199) and the legendary Robin Hood. For the outlaw Robin Hood and his men, the forest is a sanctuary and a provider of nourishment. However, its establishment as a royal forest in the twelfth century makes the forest a private place in which only the king and his men have the rights to hunt and use the sylvan resources. Throughout the decades, the royal Sherwood Forest experienced corruption through forest officers and commissioners, which led to a privatisation to encourage better management of the forest towards the end of the eighteenth century. From the 1820s onwards, due to the popularity of Scott’s novel, Sherwood Forest became ultimately a tourist location for seekers of the romantic forest wanting to experience the imagined medieval ideal. Following this, an interest in the natural history of the forest established Sherwood Forest as a popular tourist destination by the end of the nineteenth century. Economic and social changes, the use of timber in the war periods, as well as changes in forest management led to a slow but steady destruction of the forest in the early years of the twentieth century. In line with forest conversation and commercial forestry, especially concerning the preservation of the ancient oaks (with the Major Oak as the main tourist destination), Sherwood Forest again became a popular place to visit in the late twentieth century. In the short historical sketch of Sherwood Forest, the divergence between the imagined and romanticised forest of liberty and comradery and its reality becomes clear. Simon Schama remarks that, as soon as the legendary Sherwood Forest emerges in the cultural mind, it becomes “an elegy for a world of liberty and justice that had never existed: one where the relations between leader and led is of unsullied reciprocity and where the purest form of fellowship is the open-air forest feast”.45 Particularly in England, the

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dense sylvan wilderness had long been gone and the forest already managed as early as the Middle Ages so that the forests, in reality, became contraries to the primal uncultivated wilderness as discussed in the previous chapter. Consequently, the imaginary focus lies on the romantic idea of being a safe haven for outsiders and outlaws who fight against injustice. The English forest as a cultural icon depicts a safe and idealised realm in contrast to corrupted and unjust institutions and laws of civilisation. Therapeutic Forests: A Place to Heal The dual character of the concept of the forest, the forest as a wilderness and as a sanctuary, is visible in Dante’s second part of his Divine Comedy where the initial dark and dangerous forest as the entrance to hell, the selva oscura, makes place for the selva antica, the ancient forest, on top of the mountain of Purgatory. Harrison analyses this transformation of the dark forest inhabited by wild beasts into an ancient forest as a transition from an unredeemed to a redeemed forest. Having made his way through the circles of Hell, Dante’s traveller finds himself climbing the mountain of Purgatory, the same mountain he tried to ascend at the beginning of the poem, to find himself in a forest space once again. However, this time the forest is defined as a divine forest of the earthly paradise: Eager already to search in and round The heavenly forest, dense and living-green, Which tempered to the eyes the new-born day, Withouten more delay I left the bank, Taking the level country slowly, slowly Over the soil that everywhere breathes fragrances.46

Here, the forest has lost all its negative and perilous attributes and presents a solemn scenery full of light and pleasant scents. In general, the selva antica invites the traveller to roam around the forest without any fears or without getting lost. The question arises now is how the once dark and frightful forest is redeemed so that it becomes this divine forest. The answer seems to be that it is through the loss of the primal wilderness that the selva antica develops into a paradise pleasant to the wanderer. Consequently, “Dante’s selva antica is merely a denatured selva oscura. . . . The selva antica is the selva oscura deprived of its dangers, its savagery, in short, of its wildlife”.47 Deprivation of all the aspects of the classical wilderness seems, therefore, to turn the forest into a park or garden to be enjoyed by humans. The enjoyable character of a beautiful forest has become a significant aspect within conservation and preservation plans of wilderness retreats.

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Leaving hectic city life behind, reconnecting with nature and getting exercise within majestic landscapes has become popular around the globe. Especially the forest is highly regarded as one of the oldest places for recreational pleasure. In the United States, for example, the visiting numbers of the National Park Service have continuously risen since 1904, arriving at a total number of 15,703,311,966 recreation visits by 2022, with the highest recreation visit-rate of 330,971,689 visits in the year 2016.48 The charm of parks is evident and the forest as a recreational area has absolutely contributed to this particular appeal. As therapeutic landscapes, forests have a positive psychological and physical effect on the individual by exhibiting a therapeutic sylvan agency. Shinrin-yoku, the popular movement of forest bathing and its beneficial effect for the human body and soul has already been discussed. The Association of Therapeutic Effects of Forests was established in Japan in 2004 and three years later the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine in order to promote and establish a wide dialogue on the forest’s health benefits. This specific concept has been introduced and included in the Western idea of recreational parks and its research published in journals such as the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture (American Horticultural Therapy Association, since 1986). A walk through the forest, besides being physically active, can benefit people’s health in three main ways: being in nature can reduce stress or mental fatigue on a short-term basis as well as generate a faster recovery from physical illness. In addition, it can improve the individual’s overall physical and mental health permanently. The sense of awe and serenity within the wild places furthermore creates a feeling of calmness and a reduction of the ego so that the individual becomes one with nature, becomes one with something larger than any one person. This particular connection between nature and people’s physical and mental health has been positively exploited and specific forests have been designed to help the recovery of mentally and physically ill patients, such as the healing forest garden Nacadia in Denmark. In the United States, the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, founded by M. Amos Clifford in 2012, draws on medical research and the shinrin-yoku tradition to deepen the connection between the forest and individual practitioners. Together with trained guides, people can develop a meaningful relationship with the forest throughout the various seasons by taking a walk through the forest as well as meditating and working out within the sylvan world. This international association is a continuously growing community with over seven hundred guides in forty-six countries by 2019.49 What is more, the significance and benefit of the forest is recognised by Canadian physicians who started prescribing free national park passes to their patients as part of British Columbia’s Parks Foundation PaRX programme, A Prescription of Nature, launched in 2020.50 This green

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prescription sources the therapeutic agency of the forest to improve people’s physical and mental health by connecting people with the forest and nature. The various benefits of the forest and its sylvan agency as well as the many perceptions of the forest reveal the multifaceted concept of the sylvan realm. Stepping into the forest can be dangerous but also therapeutic, we can get lost or we find peace and mental or physical recovery. This ambivalent and contradictory aspect is reflected in the literary and cultural approach to the forest, where the forest is simultaneously feared and romanticised. Harrison summarises the cultural attitude towards the forest as one: full of enigmas and paradoxes. If forests appear in our religions as places of profanity, they also appear as sacred. If they have typically been considered places of lawlessness, they have also provided havens for those who took up the cause of justice and fought the law’s corruption. If they evoke associations of danger and abandon in our minds, they also evoke scenes of enchantment. In other words, in the religions, mythologies, and literatures of the West, the forest appears as a place where the logic of distinction goes astray.51

NOTES 1. Robyn McPhail and David E. Ward, Morality and Agency (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 72. 2. James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 40. 3. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 7. 4. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 593. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​/3178066. 5. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 3. 6. Latour, Never Been Modern, 145. 7. Michel Callon and John Law, “Agency and the Hybrid Collectif,” in Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory, ed. Barbara Herrnstein Smith und Arkady Plotnitsky (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 98. 8. Callon and Law, “Agency and Hybrid Collectif,” 113. 9. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 45. 10. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 71. 11. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 71. 12. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 71. 13. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 114. 14. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 128 (italics in original).

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15. Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris, “Material and Nonhuman Agency,” in Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach, ed. Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris (New York: Springer, 2008), xi. 16. Serenella Iovino, “Material Ecocriticism,” in Literature, Ecology, Ethics: Recent Trends in Ecocriticism, ed. Timo Müller and Michael Sauter (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012), 51. 17. Iovino, “Material Ecocriticism,” 56. 18. Owain Jones and Paul Cloke, Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in Their Place (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002), 55–56. 19. Jones and Cloke, Tree Cultures, 59. 20. Wohlleben has been criticised by fellow forester for a fairy tale narrative and for anthropomorphising trees and the forest system, as well as focusing highly on blaming forestry for the dwindling of the forest. A petition was launched in 2017 by a diverse group of scientists which, although acknowledging the raising awareness of the problematic situation of European forests, disapprove of the anthropocentric language and an unrealistic understanding of the sylvan ecosystem. Nevertheless, Wohlleben manages to raise awareness of the significance of preserving the forest in times of ecological activism and, consequently, his bestseller has been adapted into a documentary shown in cinemas in 2020. 21. Peter Wohlleben, Hidden Lives of Trees (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2015), 28. 22. Jones and Cloke, Tree Cultures, 60. 23. Robin Attfield, “The Good of the Trees,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 15, no. 1 (1981): 39–40. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/BF00136626. 24. Jones and Cloke, Tree Cultures, 64. 25. Jones and Cloke, Tree Cultures, 64. 26. Secretariat of the CBD, “The Value of the Forest Ecosystems,” CBD Technical Series, no. 4 (2001): 1. 27. Wil Gesler, “Lourdes: Healing in a Place of Pilgrimage,” Health & Place, no. 2 (1996): 96. 28. Bum Jim Park et al., “The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku,” Environmental Health Prev Med, no. 15 (2010): 18. https:​//​doi​.org​/0​.1080​/02827580802055978. 29. Mike MacEacheran, “Waldeinsamkeit: Germany’s Cherished Forest Tradition,” BBC Travel, March 2021, ttps://www​.bbc​.com​/travel​/article​/20210314​ -waldeinsamkeit ​ - germanys ​ - cherished ​ - forest ​ - tradition ​ ? referer ​ = https ​ % 3A ​ % 2F​ %2Fwww​.bbc​.com​%2F. 30. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 1. 31. Giambattista Vico, The First New Sciences, trans. and ed. Leon Pompa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), §382, 216. 32. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Random House, 1996), 83. 33. R. P. Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 49. 34. William Shakespeare, As You Like It (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), III.ii.294. 35. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 27.

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36. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (Huntington: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1976), 293. 37. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1886), 1:1–6. 38. Harrison, Forests, 81–84. 39. Iris Gassenbauer, “Into the Woods: Getting Lost and Meeting Witches,” Fafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 1, no. 3 (2009): 25. 40. Gassenbauer, “Into the Woods,” 21. 41. Gassenbauer, “Into the Woods,” 22. 42. Harrison, Forests, 29–33. 43. Harrison, Forests, 156. 44. Charles Watkins, Trees, Woods and Forests: A Social and Cultural History (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), 140. 45. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 149. 46. Alighieri, Divine Comedy, 28:1–6. 47. Harrison, Forests, 85. 48. “Visitation Numbers,” National Park Service, last update February 27, 2023, https:​//​www​.nps​.gov​/aboutus​/visitation​-numbers​.htm. 49. “Who Ee Are,” Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, accessed December 05, 2022, https:​//​www​.natureandforesttherapy​.earth​/about​/who​-we​-are. 50. Alaa Elassar, “Canadian Doctors are Prescribing Free Passes to National Parks to Treat Patients,” CNN, April 30, 2022, https:​//​edition​.cnn​.com​/2022​/04​/30​/health​/ canada​-doctors​-prescribe​-nature​-wellness​/index​.html. 51. Harrison, Forests, x.

PART I

The Sylvan Realm and Arboreal Characters

As I outlined in the introduction, I will consider the forest’s as well as tree’s enigmas and paradoxes represented in speculative fiction in this first section. Thus, I consider on the one hand the individual sylvan realms as hostile and natural wilderness, therapeutic sylvan sanctuaries and lost remnants of environmental and cultural memories, as well as the individual tree as cultural, historical and environmental emblems. The final chapter in Part I provides the most distinct analysis of a sylvan and arboreal voice and agency within the field of material ecocriticism. Overall, my aim is to consider how the various representations of the forest and the trees, as well as their distinct sylvan/arboreal voice and agency and the interrelationship between human characters and their sylvan environment raise ecocritical questions and foster an eco-sylvan awareness. Furthermore, I am going to evaluate how the speculative fiction helps to shift the focus to an earth and sylvan-centred perspective and establish a sylvan and arboreal agency in order to promote Morton’s ecological thought in the current Capitalocene.

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Stepping Into the Sylvan World

THE FOREST AS A HAUNTING WILDERNESS AND MANKIND’S NIGHTMARE The concept of the dark and dangerous primal forest represents one of the earliest attitudes towards wilderness and is therefore one of, maybe even the, prototypical forest motif in folklore, mythology and literature. The sylvan wilderness is a locus terribilis, a gloomy and obscured realm filled with dangerous predators and mythological creatures, governed by an ancient and natural law. Thus, the forest as a wilderness is distinctly marked as a contrast to human civilisation by signifying a primal natural realm reserved solely for its flora and fauna. Human characters are in general absent within this environment and only spend little time within such primal forests. The sheltering of dangerous creatures as well as obscuring the sky and withholding any clear and straightforward path, which leaves the traveller disoriented as well as causing a claustrophobic atmosphere, contribute to the understanding of the ancient forest as an alien and hostile wilderness. In Gothic canon, the primal forest frequently represents such an antagonistic realm and a place of fear in which the main protagonists are confronted with a physical but more so a psychological threat, as the fear of the forest cannot always be explained rationally. The dark forests in Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) represent such enclosing primal forests. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the solicitor Jonathan Harker embarks on a journey through the primal forest of Transylvania, where the forest and its feral wolves become darker and more threatening the closer he comes to the ominous castle of Count Dracula.1 Even though Harker encounters wolves on his initial journey towards the castle, the dense and dark forest exudes the dominant hostility towards the human intruder. 43

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In the form of an upsetting presence, the forest thus has a negative psychological effect on the characters. Soren Chase, Rob Blackwell’s private detective in his dark urban fantasy novel The Forest of Forever (2015), is confronted with such a haunting wilderness when hired to investigate the disappearance of a young woman in a local forest. From the first sight of the dark forest, its ominous presence is ubiquitous, albeit described in vague terms. The large primal forest reveals “something foreboding”2, but what this something might be is seldom specified and simply linked to a primal fear of the forest, where the human character feels as a trespasser in a world where trees are hostile against human intrusion. The uneasy and impalpable feeling when entering a pristine forest is immediately evident, and its agential realism, its antagonistic performance, is linked to the forest’s position as a wilderness uninhabited and untouched by human civilisation. Furthermore, the sylvan, as well as arboreal, hostile agency is highlighted through the trees’ threatening and gloomy presence marking an antagonistic realm for the human intruder. Likewise, the Doctor, in the Doctor Who episode “In the Forest of the Night” (2014), remarks on the emerging sensations and images that are subconsciously triggered when submerged in a primal forest world. Searching for Maebh Arden, the Doctor’s companion Clara Oswald realises her increasing fear, which culminates in a profound dread she cannot rationally explain. The Doctor nevertheless provides Clara, and the audience, with a somewhat “rational” explanation of the psychological dread of and within the primal forest by highlighting the cultural perception of the forest deeply enclosed in Western cultural heritage: Clara: I’m actually frightened. I never get frightened. Why am I frightened? the Doctor: You just lost a little girl. Clara: Yes, that is a worry, but I know you’ll find her. No, no, no. This is not a worry, this is a dread. [shouting] Maebh! the Doctor: You’re pursuing a little lost girl through a mysterious forest. The path has disappeared. You find yourself with a strangely compelling masculine figure. [shouting] Maebh! Clara: Any minute now we’re going to find a gingerbread cottage with a cannibal witch inside. [shouting] Maebh! the Doctor: Exactly. The forest. It’s in all the stories that kept you awake at night. The forest is mankind’s nightmare.3

The ancient forest is a wilderness that triggers our primal instincts of survival and a subconscious anxiety, thus, its sylvan agency functions here deeply on

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a psychological level by toying with the primal fear of the human character. The forest of the night, as the title of the episode already suggests, is the idea of a mysterious forest without obvious paths harbouring dangerous creatures. Referencing the classical fairy tales, especially by the Brothers Grimm, the, also somewhat alluring, terror of the forest has become a powerful cultural and literary motif and a nightmare in the subconscious mind. The primal forest becomes an ominous and stifling sylvan agent that reduces the intruding characters repeatedly to frightened and hypersensitive individuals. J. K. Rowling’s Forbidden Forest on the grounds of Hogwarts represents such a perilous realm in her Harry Potter series (1997–2007). It is a classical depiction of a dark forest inhabited by magical predators and full of danger when straying off the path, thus it is forbidden to students for a reason. From the first mentioning of the Forbidden Forest as off-limits, the forest is perceived as a threatening body looming at the edges of the school grounds and therefore at the edge of civilisation. The grim warnings about the forest by Professor Albus Dumbledore at the beginning of Harry’s first year at Hogwarts and the spiteful remark of Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch, that those who enter the forest might not “come out in one piece”4, paints a prefabricated mental image of a dangerous forest. Those warnings and comments clearly attribute a hostile agency to the dark forest. Nevertheless, Harry, voluntarily as well as involuntarily as a detention for example, ventures into the forest on numerous occasions and becomes with each time more and more accustomed to the sylvan realm. Still, the feeling of dread and distress originating from the forest closing in is ever present. The dark forest actively creates a sense of unease and feeling of being watched while becoming darker and darker farther in. Interestingly, Harry and the other characters predominately enter the Forbidden Forest at night, or at least during dusk, thus adding a further level of restlessness and anxiety to the already heightened discomfort of the characters; the already dark forest becomes a “sea of dark”5 with the thick canopy blocking out all the stars and so any means of orientation. Rowling uses the classical concept of the dark and dangerous forest stored in cultural memory to create a sense of dread of an antagonistic wilderness and a hostile sylvan agency. Although the Forbidden Forest omits a clear psychological hostility, it primarily functions as a narrative setting and a clear contrast to the wizarding world of Hogwarts, thus the civilised world, and so Rowling utilises the binary system of culture in contrast to nature here. Criticism of Rowling’s portrayal of the Forbidden Forest reflect on the idea that the forest is not portrayed as an animated and interconnected environment and a habitat for a diverse flora and fauna, for example dangerous predators such as the giant Acromantula Aragog as well as pure magical creatures such as the unicorn. Rowling’s Forbidden Forest is merely used as a site of horror and a Gothic

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motif and so contrasted to the civilised wizarding world. Consequently, through the narrow perception of the Forbidden Forest and the characters’ utilisation of its inhabitants, Rowling’s novels fail to promote an ecological thought and an appreciative approach towards the sylvan wilderness and its non-human inhabitants and primarily leave the reader with a forest world filled with terror. The sense of dread and a hostile sylvan agency experienced in a primal forest is vividly portrayed in Ali Shaw’s The Trees (2016), where Adrien, one of the main focalisers, suffers severely from claustrophobia and disorientation within the virgin forest. Particularly in the beginning of the narrative, he effectively reveals the eerie sensation of being trapped within the forest without any possibility of escape, as “there was no relief to be had in any direction . . . [and the forest] only enclosed him in its towering prison”.6 As a result, the primal forest is the most alien wilderness for the suburban Adrien, whose reluctance to accept and make the most of the new situation, paired with the frustration of repeatedly getting lost within the forest, culminates in an increasing sense of dread and panic. While listening “to the noise of the woods, [Adrien’s] entire body primed with fear. He could feel it tingling on his flesh like static electricity. Any second now, he expected to hear a bone-chilling howl”.7 It is not only Adrien who feels more and more depressed and confined within the forest. Each of their small group of travellers experiences the frustration and an impending dread from the forest, especially due to repeatedly losing their way. Through his characters, Shaw discusses the forest’s psychological thing-power and its active influence on the mind of the characters and thus exposes humans’ primal fear of the forest and its predators through its hostile sylvan agency. In especially Adrien’s state of discomfort, the forest represents a menacing sylvan agent closing in on him. Particularly in the beginning of the narrative, Adrien feels utterly alone in a primal world he cannot comprehend. As I have shown, the forest in speculative fiction can function as a bewildering place in which the characters loose themselves physically yet also mentally. Taking the uneasiness within the forest presented by Shaw a step further, Robert Holdstock applies this common metaphor to his novel Mythago Wood (1984) and presents the reader with a character, Christian Huxley, utterly lost within the forest and his own mind. Ryhope Wood, a strange English forest inhabited by myth and mystery, is therefore not only the concrete natural forest but signifies additionally the metaphorical concept of the forest as a mind; where the forest reveals a particular “aura . . . that can interact with our unconscious”.8 Even though the reader does not follow Christian’s mental decline directly, they experience the eeriness and the intensifying uneasiness within the forest through the focalisation of the main protagonist Stephen Huxley, Christian’s brother. Venturing into the strange

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forest, Stephen is exposed to the agential realism of the enclosing forest that leaves him agitated through the apparent watchfulness of the forest. The ominous presence within Ryhope Wood exposes a hostile sylvan agency on a psychological level that becomes steadily tangible until it has a direct influence on the characters’ disposition. Stephen, together with the former RAF captain Harry Keeton, flies over Ryhope Wood to inspect the dimensions of the forest. Flying towards the “dark beginning of Ryhope Wood,” he states: “The sombre pall seemed to ebb upwards from the wildwoods themselves, and as we approached the vast expanse of the forest, that darkness nagged at our own moods, darkening us, filling us with something approaching dread”.9 Once again, the unidentifiable thing-power, the emanating dread from the forest, is highlighted. Stephen and Keeton experience a growing discomfort caused by this unexplainable presence stemming from the forest, a presence that mostly exists within the subconscious minds of the travellers. This unseen presence, this dread, has a profound psychological effect on the characters: people change within the forest. Holdstock’s Stephen realises this about his brother Christian: “I’ve lost him. He went wild. He went to the woods. Inwards”.10 After months within the forest, Christian becomes one with the wild world and reemerges as a brutal wildman running havoc within the forest and its enclosing environment. Christian seemingly loses any sense of his civilised self within the sylvan wilderness. Thus, being physically submerged and disoriented within the primal forest world is equated with losing one’s own sanity. On a similar note, the protagonists of Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “Vaster than Empires and More Slow” (1971), a narrative within her Hainish Cycle, experience an increasing anxiety that arises from the covert hostility of the forest on World 4470, which leads to open aggression amongst the group. Arriving on the entirely uninhabited planet, the team of surveyors, whose assignment it is to chart unpopulated planets for potential settlements, are confronted with a forest that exhibits a psychological sylvan agency pressing on all of their dispositions. The dread emanating from the forest intensifies with each day until most lose their self-control: they go wild and inwards as well. Porlock, a Hard Scientist specialised in natural sciences, becomes more and more erratic from fear until he strikes down the empath Osden in, according to him, self-defence and has to be subdued subsequently. Another member of their team, the engineer Eskwana, on the other hand does not wake up again but “clung to his sleep, slipping farther and farther back”11 to hide in his own subconsciousness. Once again, the characters are challenged by a hostile sylvan agency, which presents the forest as a nightmare, a nightmare of the mind. The sylvan agency and its overt influence on the characters is central here and Le Guin, in contrast to her other major forest concept in The Word for World Is Forest (1976), “uses the paranormal element from the Hainish

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cycle as a way of validating a forest-mind which is a verisimilar actuality rather than a metaphor”.12 Through this, the actuality of the sylvan agency is validated, in the form of hostility towards the intruders which is interlinked within an intra-relational network by their “root-node linkage and by [their] green epiphytes in the branches”.13 Consequently, the primal forests in literature do not only represent a physical space full of danger and threat yet also a discomforting presence on the mind of the traveller, one that can only be escaped by escaping the forest itself. The hostile sylvan agency therefore clearly functions on a physical level, experienced in the form of disorientation but also through factual threats from predators (more on this below), as well as on a psychological level in which the hostile agency severely affects the psyche of the human intruder. SYLVAN HOSTILITY AND RECREATION INTERTWINED IN THE NATURAL WILDERNESS As seen, the earliest attitude towards the silvan wilderness consequently regards the forest as a hostile agent and a classical threat for the individual human intruder and civilisation in general. This approach to the primal forest is distinctly portrayed in the depiction of Mirkwood in Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) and the initial encounter with the Old Forest in The Fellowship of the Ring (1954). Both forests are represented as the classical sylvan wilderness with a hostile agency originating from the forest itself or its antagonist creatures: Within Mirkwood, the company is assaulted by giant spiders and in the Old Forest, the hobbits are harassed by the proactive mobile sentient tree character Old Man Willow. Furthermore, the agential realism of both forests disorients the travellers and evokes a sense of dread through the gloomy and depressing mood that culminates in fear and hatred of the forest. Tolkien’s Old Forest stands in a direct and clear contrast to the hobbits and their civilisation. Located next to the border of the Shire, the Old Forest displays an overt hostile agency to the neighbouring Buckland, the easternmost region of the Shire. The factual threat emanating from the Old Forest, such as the attack on the Hedge, has led the hobbits to plant a substantial hedge along the borders of their land, thus overtly signalling a boundary and dissociation between civilisation and wilderness. The stories of the Old Forest have found their way into local legends and consequently have become a vital part of the hobbits’ cultural memory and knowledge: The Old Forest has become a place and tale of nightmare for the local Bucklanders, too. Though the scary stories about the Old Forest are partly dismissed as “old bogey-stories”14, the forest does display an explicit hostile agency towards the four hobbits entering it. On the one hand, the forest’s stifling presence of enclosing trees evokes

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“an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched with disapproval, deepening to dislike and even enmity. The feeling steadily grew, until they found themselves looking up quickly, or glancing back over they shoulders, as if they expected a sudden blow”.15 The forest’s hostile agency represents Tolkien’s arresting strangeness and functions on a psychological level, toying with the subconscious of the travellers. On the other hand, a (more) physical hostility is also revealed in the trees’ shifting within the forest to conceal the path and utterly disorient the travellers. Yet more so, the hostile sylvan agency is shown through Old Man Willow, which I will discuss in more detail later. Through the hobbits’ initial journey through the forest, before they meet Tom Bombadil, the Old Forest is precisely the already discussed primal wilderness, which agential realism haunts the hobbits. Although the idea of the forest as a haunting and dangerous wilderness has been permanently imprinted on the mind of Western cultures establishing the primal forest as a place of nightmare, the silvan wilderness is not just a forest of the night but also a healthy and diverse forest environment. Initially often warned about and rightfully deemed alarming, the ancient forests repeatedly turn into a place of pristine nature once the characters are accustomed to the forest and start to understand the sylvan environment. As the Old Forest gradually introduces the realm of enchantment in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954– 1955), Tolkien’s Fangorn Forest in The Two Towers (1954) also undergoes a transition from a place of dread to an appreciated wilderness. Similar to the Old Forest, legends and stories circulate around Fangorn Forest warning the travellers not to enter its realm. Even Lord Celeborn, Lord of the Elven forest Lothlórien, warns the fellowship about the Forest of Fangorn. Worried by the words of Celeborn, the Ranger Aragorn, Chieftain of the Dúnedain who live in the wilderness of the north, additionally advises his two companions to be wary. Consequently, the Fangorn Forest is regarded as a dark and dangerous realm that presses heavily on the surrounding atmosphere. Fangorn is at first depicted as a “dark and tangled forest,” where “[a] queer stifling feeling came over them, as if the air were too thin or too scanty for breathing”.16 The description of the forest the two hobbits, Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, initially present the reader is interesting here. Pippin compares the “dim, and stuffy”17 Fangorn to an old and airless room in his ancestral home the Great Place of the Tooks and Merry subsequently identifies the forest as “just dim, and frightfully tree-ish”.18 Comparing the frightfully tree-ish forest to a lived-in housing reveals the use of an anthropocentric perspective and language in the young hobbits. Pippin cannot imagine a spring-cleaning, thus, an ordered and decluttered place. As Veryl Flieger already states, spring-cleaning is a fundamentally human idea and has nothing to do with the nature of nature.19 Consequently, Fangorn Forest with

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its dense undergrowth and its high concentration of trees represents best the classical wilderness of primal times: A healthy and diverse forest untouched by human civilisation. The recognition and appreciation of the untouched wilderness of Fangorn comes gradually. The hobbits’ perspective of the forest shifts for the first time with the morning sun that pierces through the clouds and the thick canopy. Once again, the atmosphere of the forest and the circumstances, such as reasons of entering the forest, time of day/year or weather conditions, influence the perception of the forest drastically. The hobbits entered the dark forest during the night, yet with dawn and the light of the sun, the forest transforms itself into a picturesque wilderness gleaming with “rich browns, and with the smooth black-greys of bark like polished leather. The boles of the trees glowed with a soft green like young grass”.20 The vibrant colours, the freshness of the forest and the promise of spring have a positive effect on the perception of the forest, which already hints at the forest’s therapeutic agency as well (see following chapter). Pippin recognises the shift in perception and even starts to recognise his appreciation for the sylvan world, thus, begins to form an ecological thought. However, it is ultimately the encounter with the beloved sentient tree character Treebeard and his subsequent education, similar to Tom Bombadil’s mediation within the Old Forest, which provides the strongest shift in attitude and recognition of the natural environment for the hobbits and the reader alike. Through Treebeard and his stories, Fangorn transforms into a natural and untouched vast sylvan wilderness inhabited and shepherded by the sentient Ents. This untouched and uncultivated wilderness is central to the Fangorn Forest and at the heart of its Ents. Although Fangorn presents an overt appreciation of the wilderness, Tolkien seems to forget an essential part of the primal forest: In all the stunning descriptions of the Fangorn Forest, there is seldom mentioning of its fauna; the Ents and their associated trees seem to be the only sentient and proactive beings in the forest. Thus, the intra-relational network of the healthy forest is omitted. The sounds are those of the wind and the whispering of/in the trees or Ents, but there is no substantial evidence of chirping or rustling in the undergrowth that would at least hint at further animals, such as birds or squirrels. The primal sylvan wilderness not only consists of various trees, even though they are without a doubt the quintessential part of the forest, but also encompasses a diverse range of flora and fauna living in an interconnected network. The fauna of a forest ecology is organised in various trophic levels (the position an organism occupies on the food chain). Those levels include: primary producers: large and dominant trees, as well as understory shrubs, forbs, grasses, mosses, lichens, and even algae; large and small herbivores such as moose, deer, mice, and caterpillars; carnivores such as cougars, coyotes,

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weasels, shrews, and cleride beetles; and decomposers, which could include larger animals such as bears that eat carrion but are usually comprised of smaller organisms such as earthworms, fungi, and bacteria.21

Even though herbivores and carnivores are mostly mentioned in passing, as the primary focus is on the depiction of the primary producers, the portrayal of herbivores and/or carnivores often aligns with the overall understanding of the forest. Herbivores are often employed as a startling but also picturesque and romanticised encounter, such as deer grazing on a clearing or birds chirping in the trees, or they are used as game. The forested mountain region of the Spine in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle (2003–2011), for example, provides the inhabitants of Carvahall with essential game. Shaw’s virgin forest, in turn, introduces a mythical creature with the body of a rhinoceros, yet with a slim and long neck, covered in long silvery fur. The first encounter with this strange “unicorn,” later likened to the Japanese unicorn legend of the kirin, paints a picturesque and enchanted scene: Hannah finds the giant creature sleeping on the banks of a brook in the soft moonlight. It is a magical and serene sight, which generates a sense of ease and wonderment at the beauty of the wilderness where “bestial things and beautiful things could be as one”.22 Shaw’s occasionally frightful virgin forest, is presented as a healthy and beautiful wilderness similar to Thomas A. Barron’s depiction of the primal forest in The Ancient One (2004). Barron presents on multiple occasions a forest filled with natural noises of the forest’s fauna, and thus a forest filled with intra-relational networks: As they moved deeper into this realm of green and brown, the sky, barely visible through the thick canopy of branches above their heads, grew lighter by degrees. Subtle sounds came more and more frequently: Shadowy wings fluttered, twigs snapped, branches creaked, small creatures squealed. It was impossible to tell whether forest beings, alarmed by intruders, were scattering to escape, or whether they were simply stirring in anticipation of the sunrise.23

It is such a central part of a healthy forest ecology that Barron highlights the rustling noises and lively activity in the forest world towards the beginning of Kate and Melanie’s adventure in the forest. Whereas herbivores are depicted in a more picturesque and peaceful setting, carnivores are classically portrayed as predators and thus the stereotypical creatures of the dark and dangerous forest of nightmares with the wolf as the first and foremost primal predator and a threatening presence for the travellers within the dark forests. While travelling through Ryhope Wood in Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, Keeton initially keeps a diary as a testament

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to their journey and describes the discomforting presence the forest emanates. Camping in the forest, they are repeatedly haunted by “the sounds of beast”24 at night, which disturb their camp. In Shaw’s The Trees, wolves are the canine predators and a major source of discomfort and deaths. Those depictions and perceptions of wolves, and further predators, are very much in line with the classical representation of animal predators of the wilderness found in folktales and legends as well. George R. R. Martin’s wild forests of Westeros in A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–present), such as the Wolfswood north of Winterfell and the Haunted Forest beyond the Wall, additionally represent this sylvan wilderness filled with predators and nights that come “alive with the howls of distant packs, and some not so distant”.25 The forest is not a silent world, only populated by majestic trees, but a vital habitat and interconnected ecosystem for numerous flora and fauna. As could be seen, one of the forest’s archetypal motifs is that of a sylvan wilderness that functions as a primal antagonist to human civilisation, exhibiting an agential realism of hostile sylvan agency. Untouched and unchanged by humans, for most part, the sylvan wilderness is composed of ancient trees, which canopy obscures the sun and stars and thus conceals direct means of orientation, has a dense undergrowth that complicates the journey and of wild animals, especially predators, which roam the forest. Thus, the dark and dangerous forest exists as a world of its own, a world in which the human character is primarily a temporal traveller prone to lose their senses. Stepping into this primal wilderness often generates a feeling of uneasiness and discomfort triggered by the factual threat of disorientation and/or predators, yet, it frequently also culminates in an ominous sense of dread that emanates from the ancient forest realm itself: Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different world. . . . The haunted forest was much the same, and yet the feeling was very different. Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon’s spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.26

Martin effectively describes the claustrophobic sense of an enclosing forest that shuts out any sign of the outside world. The characters experience an aggravating sense of fear and dread that tells them that this is not their world, but that they have entered a “different world” beyond their civilisation.

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THE FOREST AS A SANCTUARY AND SYLVAN REFUGE Whereas the dark and dangerous forest has previously been considered a threatening counterpart to the civilised world, stepping into a natural forest also brings peace and restoration from the often hectic and at times perilous civilised world. The positive effects of the healthy sylvan environment for the individual, in terms of physical but also mental health, are numerous (see for instance the shinrin-yoku movement). Consequently, the forest also functions as a locus amoenus and a peaceful sanctuary in which the characters can rest and heal. Particularly city forests or forests associated with a major city or castle offer a distinct and direct contrast to their respective human dwellings and are thus recurrently presented as islands of peace and tranquillity. Within those sylvan islands, the various characters can submerge themselves and contemplate in silence. Terry Brooks’s Gardens of Life, in which the sentient Ellcrys resides, can be understood as such a city forest that provides a healthy and restorative environment for its visitors through its therapeutic agency. Although rarely presented in this light in The Elfstones of Shannara (1982), the enclosed forest garden in midst the Elven city of Arborlon appears to be a place of contemplation for the young prince Ander Elessedil in times of crisis. A more apparent example of a therapeutic sylvan agent that stands in direct contrast to a hectic urban place is presented in Martin’s godswoods in A Song of Ice and Fire, where Winterfell’s godswood provides a safe haven for the Northern characters. As an ancient forest, the godswood of Winterfell is described as a primal wilderness that initially emits an eerie and otherworldly atmosphere particularly for outside characters; although due to its encircling wall without any large predators. Nevertheless, the godswood is foremost a place of worship and simultaneously a wilderness sanctuary for the local Stark family. Winterfell’s godswood is encircled by thick castle walls and thus physically part of Winterfell yet also separated from the busy castle life. Therefore, the godswood offers a calm centre and sylvan counterpart to the crowded castle. The noisiness of Winterfell is instantaneously drowned out once the characters step over the threshold into the forest so that the godswood becomes “an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become”.27 The dense godswood with “the deep silence of the trees”28 offers a stimulating place for worship and reflection for the Stark family. The “quiet of the godswood”29, in the North as well as in the southern regions of Westeros, helps the characters to think and recover from mental fatigue in a world that is filled with violent conflict. Even though the southern godswoods are no primal woods anymore but cultivated gardens and thus more similar to Dante’s selva antica, their serene contrast to the industrious lives within the cities and castles brings peace and comfort, mental as well as physical, to the

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detached Northerners. Therefore, the godswoods, in form of the more primal wilderness in the North and the rather cultivated gardens in the South, present places of a healthy sylvan sanctuary in which the Starks feel connected to their family and faith and in which the contact with nature reveals the powerful therapeutic agential realism of the forest on mind and body. Westeros’ godswoods are places of worship and profound sanctuary and so provide a significant place for shelter as well. On various occasions, the godswoods function periodically as a hideout for individual characters, as a safe place to stow away objects, or as a secluded shelter to plan an escape. After House Bolton, a noble family of the North, seizes Winterfell from the invading Ironborn, the godswood becomes a shelter from the ashes of the burned castle for the fatally injured Maester Luwin and so his final resting place. In turn, the godswood of Harrenhall, the largest castle in Westeros located in the Riverlands, presents a potent sanctuary for young Arya Stark, who is brought to the castle as a servant girl. While at Harrenhall, Arya once and again uses the godswood as a hideout as she “liked the sharp smell of the pines and sentinels, the feel of grass and dirt between her toes, and the sound the wind made in the leaves”.30 The forest’s therapeutic agency once more helps to sooth the mind of the character in an otherwise chaotic surrounding and it is within “the kingdom of the leaves, [Arya] unsheathed and for a time forgot them all”.31 Within the godswood of Harrenhall, Arya thus finds strength and comfort as well as hides a broken broomstick among the trees to keep practicing her swordplay in secrecy; consequently, it is also a place of small personal rebellion. For her older sister Sansa on the other hand, the nightly godswood of King’s Landing becomes a different place of secrecy and conspiracy where, in the secluded wood, she meets with her presumed saviour Ser Dontos to plan her escape from King’s Landing and captivity from the Lannister family. As can be seen, the godswoods of Westeros are sylvan places that perform different and valuable functions especially for the Stark family of the North, who have a closer connection to the woods through their worshipping of the Old Gods (more on this in a following chapter). Consequently, besides being the central place of worship, the godswoods are vital sanctuaries and shelters for the Stark characters. The various forest regions of Westeros’ South provide a vital refuge for the stricken smallfolk as well, who for instance build a hidden village in the trees’ branches to hide from the raging conflicts in the lands. Yet more so, the forest becomes the central refuge for the outlawed Brotherhood without Banners. Sent out by Eddard Stark, as the Hand of then King Robert Baratheon, to deal with marauding outlaws in the Riverlands, the dispatch, led by Lord Beric Dondarrion, is immediately ambushed and scattered. By the time they manage to regroup, a violent transfer of power in the capital King’s Landing establishes them as outlaws themselves. Keeping faith with their

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initial assignment, the Brotherhood becomes an underground militia under no Lord’s banner and a protective alliance fighting against injustice in the poorer countryside of central Westeros. It is a powerful narrative of good men becoming outlaws, who help the small folk by “fight[ing] the fights that need fighting. The king’s fights”.32 As criminal brigands, the Brotherhood is forced into hiding in the wilderness and makes a hollow hill in the woods their secret lair. Thus, they become the “the brotherhood without banners . . . the knights of the hollow hill”.33 By constantly moving from one shelter to the next to avoid captivity, they are aided by the small folk who provide shelter, flock to their cause and circulate legends and stories about them. One of the brothers, the musician Tom of Sevenstreams, composes a song about the Brotherhood that links them to the sylvan realm while displaying a romantic and nostalgic picture of the outlawed knight: “The brothers of the Kingswood, / they were an outlaw band. / The forest was their castle, / but they roamed across the land”.34 Therefore, as outlaws in hiding, they regard the Kingswood and the surrounding forests as their sanctuary and their base of operation: “These are [their] woods”.35 The narrative of the “knights of the hollow hill” is deeply reminiscent of the heroic outlaws of English history and later folklore who fought against injustice from the secrecy of their sylvan refuge. English forests became a place of retreat as well as battleground for rebels against the Norman invasion and the introduced Forest Law. Later, the historical figures and their potent motif of the rebellious outlaw, with the forest as a sanctuary and base of operation, soon found its way into folklore and legends, with the exploits of Robin Hood as the most prominent illustration. Same as these legends, the Brotherhood considers themselves, and are considered by the small folk, not as dishonest criminals but advocates of moral justice in a corrupted world. The sylvan wilderness represents a natural and just opposition to the corrupted and manipulative world of civilisation in which law and justice is twisted by those in power. In Westeros, the war for the Iron Throne is played amongst the noble houses at the expense of the small folk and the land. In the forests, the Brotherhood is committed to their noble cause of protecting the small folk and executes natural justice for those forgotten in the game of thrones. However, Martin does not present his reader with an oversimplified version of the romanticised outlaw but reflects on the individual’s struggle to survive in a war-infested world with their moral compass intact. The Brotherhood’s fight to defend the realm is initially structured around their moral code of honour and justice; Sandor Clegane, the Lannister’s Hound, for example is permitted a trial by combat to answer for the butchery of an innocent boy and prove himself innocent of it. Yet, the noble Brotherhood eventually breaks down and gives way to a violent and merciless hunt for revenge after the realm falls into further chaos and conflict following the Red

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Wedding. Although the idea of justice morphs into callous revenge through the leadership of Lady Stoneheart, the sylvan realm continues to represent a sanctuary for the pursued and the abandoned, as well as a place of justice under the ancient and natural law of the wilderness. Tolkien’s forests in, especially, The Lord of the Rings might not necessarily be the same places of justice as Westeros’ forests but they do provide the travellers with vital hiding as well as resting places and thus each of the major forests, the Old Forest, Fangorn, Lothlórien as well as Ithilien, exhibit a therapeutic sylvan agency to varying degrees. All four forests, even the most primal and antagonistic Old Forest, perform as sanctuaries for the weary travellers and function as natural refuges. Interestingly, the narrative structure is similar in three of the encounters with the forests (excluding Ithilien here) and is reminiscent of classical fairy tales. The initial choice to enter the forest, spontaneously or planned as in the case of Lothlórien, is in all three cases governed by a threat of being directly pursued or the fear of being followed or seen on the open road: In fear of the mysterious Black Riders appearing in the Shire, the four hobbits decide to use the cover of the Old Forest to make their way to Bree; the Fellowship in turn makes haste to reach the safety of Lothlórien fearing a pursuit by the goblins of Moria; Merry and Pippin hide within the Fangorn Forest from their captors the Uruk-hais and the Rohirrim’s attack on said captors. Although being warned or having heard nightmare-stories about the forests and are thus justifiably anxious about them, the cover of the sylvan realm drives the characters into the forests. Eventually, even though the Old Forest and Fangorn initially display a hostile agency, the perception of and time within the forests changes with the encounter of the various characters affiliated with their respective forests, promoting an eco-sylvan awareness and establishing a therapeutic sylvan agency. Through the hospitality of forest and its affiliated characters, the forest is perceived in a new light and becomes a sanctuary and healing place for the travellers; a pause in their journeys. Thus, Tolkien’s (sylvan) wilderness is, in contrast to its historical and cultural perception, not the conventional antagonist to culture and civilisation when it comes to manners and etiquette. A central part of hospitality is food: Bombadil for example offers the hobbits delicious and sumptuous meals and the Elves of Lothlórien in turn provide the fellowship with the nourishing Elven bread lembas for their future journey. Particularly Treebeard and more so Bombadil provide refreshments and a place to heal and rest within the sylvan wilderness. Yet, the forest’s agential realism itself provides nourishment, too. In Fangorn, for example, Merry and Pippin drink a draught from the river Entwash, which energises them immediately. The nourishing effect of the Ent-draught is so immense that it makes the hobbits grow in statue and improve their state of health. The potency of the natural realm is thus physically revealed. For Frodo Baggins

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and Samwise Gamgee, on the other hand, the forest of Ithilien provides them with small game and herbs so that, out in the wilderness, Sam is able to cook a rabbit stew the two hobbits can enjoy. As a provider of nourishment, as well as refuge and sanctuary, the forests themselves are therapeutic agents and consequently play a vital part in contributing to the mental and physical restoration of Tolkien’s travellers. In particular, the Elven forest Lothlórien and the forest of Ithilien, the “garden of Gondor”36 lying between Minas Tirith and Mordor, present such a distinct therapeutic sylvan agent in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The overall sweet fragrance of the forests, their clean and fresh air, the soothing colours and the calming sounds of a healthy nature brings peace as well as mental and physical health to the various characters. To begin with, the Elven forest Lothlórien is the first truly therapeutic sylvan landscape the fellowship encounters, with the Old Forest mainly being a haunting wilderness. In contrast to the quite tree-ish sylvan wilderness of the later Fangorn, Lothlórien is a clean and tended garden-forest, which is highly evident in the fact that the fellowship is able to walk unhampered through the forest. The three chapters on Lothlórien reveal a highly picturesque sylvan landscape that reveals an awe-inspiring scenery. In particular their first sight of the clearing Cerin Amroth, the heart of the forest, catches Frodo’s breath and lets him and the rest of the fellowship stand in awe of the perfect idyll. However, the episode in Lothlórien not only presents an aesthetically enjoyable forest but also demonstrates its potent therapeutic sylvan agency. Lothlórien is a vital place of physical and mental recovery after the fellowship experienced their first great loss in the death of Gandalf the Grey in the mines of Moria. Arriving at the edge of Lothlórien, the forest-river Nimrodel provides the fellowship with fresh and clear water that heals the tired travellers and its sound of rushing water brings tranquillity and a drowsiness that lets them forget their grief for a while. The thing-power of Nimrodel and its healing effects thus already hint at the two levels of therapeutic agency, mental and physical recovery, which is later implemented by the healthy and refreshing forest as well. In total, the fellowship: remained some days in Lothlórien, so far they could tell or remember. All the while that they dwelt there the sun shone clear, save for a gentle rain that fell at times, and passed away leaving all things fresh and clean. The air was cool and soft, as if it were early spring, yet they felt about them the deep and thoughtful quiet of winter. It seemed to them that they did little but eat and drink and rest, and walk among the trees; and it was enough.37

Whereas their bodies recover from the long and arduous journey, the soothing walk through the forest “among the ancient mallorns provides the sustenance

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necessary on [their] path of recovery—nourishment of the soul, as important as sleep and food”.38 Lothlórien’s physical and psychological therapeutic agency, as a green and healthy forest, offers the fellowship a sanctuary and refuge in which they can rest and forget their sorrows. The therapeutic agency of a healthy forest is more than apparent in the beautifully tended forest of Lothlórien, which is resumed in the depiction of Ithilien. The first description of the garden of Gondor presents Ithilien as “a fair country” with “small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs”.39 Tolkien provides his reader once and again with a very comprehensive description of the surrounding landscape. The detailed account of the manifold trees and herbs and their pleasant fragrances evoke a sensual image of a healthy and flourishing forest in springtime. This description is reminiscent of Dante’s selva antica, the paradisiac forest at the end of the traveller’s journey. Ithilien’s most potent therapeutic agency is however revealed towards the end of The Lord of the Rings, where the forest’s healing qualities are overtly used for recovery. After the defining battle against the forces of Sauron has been won, Ithilien becomes a place of physical and mental restoration in which the weary soldiers find rest and their wounds are healed. Transitioning directly from the destructive volcanic eruption of Mt Orodruin after the One Ring had been thrown into the volcano, the sylvan tranquillity and its sweet fragrance brings peace and comfort to all. When awaking, Sam “found that he was lying on some soft bed, but over him gently swayed wide beechen boughs, and through their young leaves sunlight glimmered, green and gold. All the air was full of sweet mingled scent”.40 Walking amongst the trees of a healthy forest, with its natural sounds and fresh fragrances, clearly brings peace of mind and soul and refreshes the body. Thus, a therapeutic sylvan agency is established in Tolkien’s forests, functioning as sanctuaries and refuges. To summarise, Barron clearly shows this effect of a sylvan locus amoenus in his novel, where Kate and Aunt Melanie experience the therapeutic sylvan agency after being confronted with the horrors of deforestation: “Gradually, amidst the growing light, the forest began to work its healing powers. Subtle aromas comforted her, sounds of the living woods encircled her again. The clear-cut moved farther and farther into the distance, until it was difficult even to remember in the presence of such lush greenery”.41 THE FOREST AS A LOST MEMORY In the two previous chapters, the forest’s agential realism and its sylvan agency has been explored within the duality of the forest as primal wilderness

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and therapeutic refuge. What unites the two contrasting identities however is the fact that both forest concepts are islands in a changing world and so recurrently speak of a time gone by, thus representing places of lost memory. Harrison analyses the forests of nostalgia in his work and identifies that “forests have the psychological effect of evoking memories of the past; indeed, that they become figures of memory itself. They are enveloped, as it were, in the aura of lost origins”.42 The aura of a lost origin is profoundly connected to a state of nostalgia, a highly emotive concept that evokes a longing for a lost world and a sentimentality for the past. However, as Harrison furthermore remarks, nostalgia “is an ambivalent stance: it cannot but evoke the condition it laments, and cannot but present its lost paradise (or forests) as anything but imaginary, inaccessible, or unreal”.43 Harrison does not deny the reality of the forest and the world that once was nor the reality of nostalgia but claims that the nostalgic perspective of the forests nevertheless suggests an alternative to the facts by maintaining an idea of beauty and sublime. Thus, presenting a romanticised notion of a lost past. Forests of speculative worlds display such a nostalgic longing for a lost paradise and lost forest world on two levels, on an environmental and on a cultural level. On the one hand, the wild forests are remnants of an ancient sylvan wilderness and thus evoke a nostalgic memory of a forest that may have once stretched vastly across the world. Within this level, an ecological thought and eco-sylvan awareness is encouraged and linked to the drastic environmental changes, especially in the Capitalocene, so that the fading forest, as a lost memory of ancient and extensive wilderness, evokes an environmental nostalgia. On the other hand, the forests are often deeply connected to their (fictional) place and so reveal lost memories of their respective cultures; additionally, the sublime forests expose a lost memory of an ancient paradisiacal realm, a sylvan Arcadia. The Forest as a Lost Memory of a Vast Wilderness The loss of primal forests is a recurring motif in various speculative fictions, painting a deep longing for a wild world that once was and, at the same time, promoting an environmental nostalgia. Barron’s Hidden Forest within Cronon’s Crater represents a lost memory of a sylvan wilderness full of ancient redwoods in The Ancient One. Unknown and thus undisturbed for centuries, the Hidden Forest is a lost environment in the midst of a changing world where deforestation threatens the ancient sylvan ecosystem: The Hidden Forest is “a forgotten place . . . Lost. Lost from time”.44 Set apart from the dwindling old-growth redwood forests along the West Coast of the United States, the Hidden Forest remained untouched by human progress and, therefore, persisted as a sylvan wilderness reminiscent of a time when

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the world was young and where people lived harmoniously within and with the forests. When Kate and her aunt Melanie enter the Lost Crater and the Hidden Forest through a tunnel behind a waterfall, the ancientness of the forest becomes apparent in the deep and rich colours and in the abundance of a healthy and undisturbed forest. Barron uses vibrant adjectives to describe the flowers on “a meadow so verdant”45, the “blue, blue lake”46 as well as the various fauna of the forest to paint a most picturesque and therapeutic environment. During this single chapter, Kate and Melanie step into an ancient time and walk through a sylvan world that “smelled older, deeper”47 and in which they are “the only human beings ever to walk . . . since the time of the Halamis”.48 Secluded through the natural walls of the crater and, for the most part, hidden underneath a dense fog, the Hidden Forest represents an ancient sylvan island and a lost memory of a sylvan wilderness of primitive times. However, the Hidden Forest too becomes a lost memory at the end of the novel after the Ancient One, the most majestic of the redwoods, has been violated and cut down by loggers and the forest is eventually turned into a national park. The changing of the world and the progress of humanity, highly reflective of the Capitalocene, renders the sylvan wilderness an environmental memory, even though the contemporary forests are already lost memories of a once vast wilderness. The loss of an interconnected forest as a vast wilderness is also explicitly lamented in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, where the four major forest regions of Middle-earth, the Old Forest, Lothlórien, Fangorn Forest and Mirkwood, are but remnants and “survivor[s] of vast forgotten woods”.49 Whereas, as I will discuss later, the Elven forest Lothlórien primarily signifies a lost memory of the Edenic Valinor, the infested forest of Mirkwood reveals a vague memory of a healthy and prosperous Elven forest. Juxtaposed to these Elven forests, the Old Forest and Fangorn are primal wilderness enclaves and represent a lost memory of a vanishing sylvan world. The environmental nostalgia of a once extensive sylvan wilderness is a recurrent theme explored in connection to the two forests and illustrated in the recollection of a forest that was once one. Treebeard reminisces about a time when vast regions of Middle-earth were covered with one dense forest in which he could walk undisturbed and listen to the fauna of the woods. The loss of the vast forest is wide-ranging and disastrous and ultimately reveals a sylvan wilderness in decline. It is not the days of abundance anymore but the ancient forests have become tiny patches on the map of Middle-earth. The Elven lord Elrond regards this as a tragedy as well and reveals the same sentimentality as Treebeard. Tolkien’s old forests therefore conform to Harrison’s fundamental statement that forests were first but are now in decline. The once connected sylvan wilderness of Middle-earth has become but a shadow

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of its former vastness and consequently the individual forests represent lost memories of this once immense sylvan world. The forests were first and so their surviving remnants depict environmental enclaves in a changing world and speak of environmental but also cultural times gone by. Martin’s Northern godswoods further illustrate such primal wilderness areas, which recall an unaffected ancient forest, as well as a primitive time when nature and nature deities were worshipped. Winterfell’s godswood is: a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.50

The description of the godswood focuses on and highlights its primitiveness in the fact that it has been uncultivated and unaltered since its beginning; the surrounding castle wall is the only manufactured alteration to the natural sylvan environment. The wall encloses the primal godswood and shuts out all the noise and progress from the busy world outside, consequently, the godswood is established as a sylvan time capsule. By stepping into the godswood, the cultivated and inhabited world is left behind and the characters walk within a primal wilderness in which the trees predate their cultural history and the Old Gods, the gods of nature, are still alive. The close proximity to and circumvallation of the hectic castle life, together with the fact that the ancient godswoods become less towards the south of Westeros, reveal the overall increasing loss of primitive nature. Only in the “true” and wild north, Beyond the Wall in the Lands of Always Winter, does the reader encounter a last primordial sylvan wilderness in the Haunted Forest. The Forest as a Lost Memory of an Ancient Culture Primal forests represent a dwindling sylvan wilderness. Nevertheless, they are regularly associated with cultural and religious sites as well and therefore harbour cultural memory, too. Forest and culture are intricately interwoven and influence each other on various levels, thus revealing an intra-relational agency within an ecological thought. The strong association between the two concepts reveals that “as forests were once everywhere in the geographical sense, so too they were everywhere in the fossil record of cultural

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memory”.51 As a site of historical and cultural origin, as sacred groves, or recreational parks amongst other concepts, the forest is a natural realm in which culture is represented and preserved. By analysing the primal forests of the classical folktales and fairy stories of the Grimm Brothers, Harrison shows that forests have “genetic and symbolic connection to memory, customs, national character, and ageless forms of popular wisdom”.52 Consequently, forests have a “strange kind of ‘documentary’ authority”53 of a culture. Martin’s godswoods of the North can be seen as such forests that harbour cultural memory and through this reveal a documentary authority of the Northern customs and religion, presenting a documentary of a specific place. First, the faith of the Northerners in the Old Gods is structured around the idea of traditional Pagan belief systems of northern Europe and the idea of animism. Therefore, the godswoods are the central religious sites in which the worshipping of the Old Gods is practiced by praying towards the heart trees. However, the dominant faith in Westeros is the Faith of the Seven (based on a Christian faith system) and it is only in the North that the primal godswoods with their heart trees remain the primal site of worship. They are thus lost memories of an animistic nature that once spread over the continent of Westeros. As a significant religious site, the godswoods are vital to the culture of the North, in which religious and cultural practices are performed and everyday life happens. In particular, the godswood of Winterfell harbours the cultural memory of the castle and the people living there. As the ancestral seat of the Stark family for most of Westeros’ recorded history, Winterfell and its godswood are intrinsically linked to the history, culture and memory of the Starks. As I have discussed previously, the primal wilderness of the godswood was first and it was around this grove that, according to legend, Brandon the Builder build the ancient castle and so connects the natural world with the rising culture of the First Men. As the castle rises around it, the godswood becomes a sylvan witness of Winterfell’s history. In particular, the central heart tree with its carved face and observant eyes stores the memories of the place as they “had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone . . . and had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them”.54 The memory of Winterfell and its people is later exposed directly when Brandon Stark, while being trained to become the next greenseer, enters the consciousness of Winterfell’s heart tree and witnesses, in a time lapse, crucial moments of its history. Bran initially glimpses his father Lord Eddard Stark praying in front of the heart tree which, however, soon dissolves to make way for more memories of earlier Starks and their life with and within the godswood: Children play fighting with wooden branches, a pregnant woman uttering prayers and lovers meeting in front of the heart tree. The memories reach all the way back to ancient times when “the lords . . . were tall and hard,

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stern men in fur and chain mail”55 and ritualistic sacrifices were performed in front of the then young heart tree. Thus, Winterfell’s godswood represents a sylvan documentary authority by preserving the memory of the place and revealing its changing times. The godswood is clearly connected to the Starks and harbours their family memory. Even after they have been driven out of their ancestral home, the presence of the Stark family continues to linger within the godswood. The godswood thus represents a haunting memory of a culture and a people, especially for the burdened Theon Greyjoy. While wandering through the primal godswood and halting in front of the heart tree, Theon considers the enduring memory and presence of the Starks in this wood. He feels as an outsider and intruder within the godswood where the heart tree is “Ned Stark’s tree, he thought, and Stark’s wood, Stark’s castle, Stark’s gods. This is their place”.56 The strong connection between godswood and its surrounding culture is apparent and shows that the woods encompass cultural memories as significant sites of cultural practices and as witnesses of the past. The connection between woods and culture is furthermore evident in Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, where the woodland region contains and assembles the cultural history of England. Particularly in England, where the sylvan wilderness that once covered almost the entire island had vanished at an early state of human progress, the remaining woods are intermingled with the English culture early on. English woodlands thus can be considered cultural niches that contain and preserve cultural history. In the introduction of the thirtieth anniversary edition of Mythago Wood, Neil Gaiman remarks on the novel’s overall environmental nostalgia and states that English woods “seem to remember when the whole of the island was one huge forest, and contain that forest within themselves”.57 Consequently, English woods and their fictional representation in Ryhope Wood are lived places and harbour cultural memory, especially in a place where the sylvan wilderness is almost non-existing. In his novel, Holdstock paints “a primal oak woodland, . . . [an] untouched forest from a time when all of the country was covered with deciduous forests of oak and ash and elder and rowan and hawthorn”.58 Although clearly an uncultivated primal wilderness, Ryhope Wood is not untouched by human history but contains and remembers the developing culture and its legends of the British Isles in form of mythagos, creatures created from the ancient myths and cultural memories within the subconscious of the human minds. The cultural memory embedded within the wood stretches across a long history and vast cultural tradition, including encounters with Neolithic tribespeople and “shamiga.59 . . . from the early Bronze Age in Europe, perhaps two thousand years BC”.60 Additionally, incidents speak of Saxons seeking shelter in an ancient Roman villa or encounters with “a primitive form of

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Arthur, and a Knight, straight out of Malory” fighting in “a tournament in the older sense, a crazed battle in a woodland clearing”.61 Furthermore, cultural practices, such as shamanism or Morris dances, pre-Roman Celtic traditions and legends of the Green Man or Robin Hood are evoked through the mythagos within the narrative. On their journey through Ryhope Wood, Steve and Keeton are consequently deeply submerged in the cultural history of the British Isles; a history that is not only represented through its people but also through its various archetypal places. Such signs of man include the mentioned Roman villa, as well as Tudor and wooden houses, ruined stone towers or “a castle out of the wildest dreams of fairie, a gloomy, overgrown fortress from the time of Knights”.62 Ryhope Wood thus presents nearly a replication of the historic past, yet its enchanted realm has also evolved beyond the historical and cultural recollection of the British Isles. As the mythagos are created from the subconscious of the characters in close proximity to Ryhope Wood or can be drawn from a broader cultural memory, they can represent different versions of the legends or history corresponding to the memory or knowledge of the individual characters. Ryhope Wood therefore exhibits an interrelational agency to present a historical sketch of the culture of the British Isles and with that displays a memory of its traditions. The Forest as a Memory of a Lost Paradise The most prominent and emotive illustration of the forest as a lost memory of an Edenic origin is presented in Tolkien’s Elven forest Lothlórien. The sublime forest is the centre of the Elven people in Middle-earth and directly connected to Valinor, the Blessed Realm of the Valar. For the Elves, Lothlórien is a living memory and reminiscence of the forest of Lórien within Valinor; even its Elven name is a recollection of the beautiful garden of the Undying Lands. Both forests are identified as the fairest places in their corresponding worlds and their enchantment is founded upon the strength and magic of the Valar and the Elves living within it. In Lórien dwell the Valar Irmo and his spouse Ëste and together they provide a place of refreshment and healing for the Valar, so that Lórien becomes a therapeutic landscape of Valinor. Correspondingly, the Lady Galadriel is the source of Lothlórien’s enchantment, in particular through her Elven ring Nenya. Born in Valinor, Galadriel furthermore connects Middle-earth’s Lothlórien to the Edenic forest of Lórien, as well as her time in the sylvan kingdom of Doriath, tended by the Maia Melian who herself dwelt long in Lórien, connects Lothlórien to the memory of the enchanted sylvan realm of Doriath of ancient times. The nostalgic memory of the lost world of Valinor is ever-present in everything that is connected to the Elves but most so in the depiction of Lothlórien and is felt strongly by the characters as soon as they enter the

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sylvan realm. By crossing the river Silverlode into Lothlórien, Frodo feels as if he “stepped over a bridge into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world”.63 The idea of directly stepping into a lost world is central here so that the forest becomes an island of ancient times and “a sylvan sanctuary in which the harmony, beauty, and love of the blessed past remain alive”.64 The omnipresent nostalgia and sublimity of the forest heightens the fellowship’s senses and they, once and again, have the impression of stepping “through a window that looked on a vanished world” and the feeling of being “inside a song”.65 As I have already mentioned, the first sight of the heart of Lothlórien, the clearing Cerin Amroth, catches Frodo’s breath and lets him and the rest of the fellowship stand in awe of the perfect idyll reminiscent of the Elder Days. Tolkien’s strategy of blindfolding the fellowship for their first journey effectively enhances the marvels and beauty of the sublime forest at first sight. They remain briefly in this picturesque clearing with its fresh and vivid colours bathed in the soft light of the afternoon sun, but the salutary effect of the highly evocative scenery lingers in the heart and mind of the characters, as well as the reader. Tolkien himself revealed in a letter that “(when the work is no longer hot, immediate or so personal) certain features of [The Lord of the Rings], and especially certain places, still move [him] very powerfully. The heart remains in the description of Cerin Amroth”.66 Cerin Amroth is the heart and centre of the forest of Lothlórien and thus the heart of the Elven kingdom in Middle-earth; yet, the forest is also a therapeutic sanctuary in which the heart of the traveller and the reader gladdens, while experiencing a paradisiacal landscape. The vivid and emotional connection to the Edenic Valinor presents Lothlórien as a timeless world set apart from the rest of Middle-earth. By stepping over the threshold of the forest, the fellowship enters a world reminiscent of the Elder Days. Simultaneously, they experiences a loss of time themselves. Lothlórien’s timelessness is its most potent feature portraying the forest as a lost memory of the Elder Days. For the fellowship, the factual time spent in Lothlórien is blurred as they start to lose count of their time in the sylvan sanctuary. The loss of time is furthermore connected to the overall carefreeness experienced within the therapeutic landscape. However, once they leave Lothlórien behind, time seems to catch up with them and their seemingly short rest reveals itself to have been a monthlong recovery. The timelessness of Lothlórien, through the Elven presence and especially through Galadriel and her Elven ring Nenya, functions as a girdle—similar to the Girdle of Melian in Doriath—protecting the forest from evil forces and the changing of time. More than once, the virginity and spotlessness of Lothlórien is highlighted.

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Even though there is no stain on the forest, there is a great sense of loss looming over Lothlórien. The Elven forest will fade and become itself only a memory once the power of Galadriel ceases and she leaves Middle-earth for Valinor. Thus, the nostalgic longing as well as the despair for their fading world is reflected in the character of Galadriel, who speaks of the certainty of loss. She tells Frodo he arrived at the beginning of the Elves’ impending fate, a time where Lothlórien’s “Spring and . . . Summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory”.67 Consequently, the highly emotive chapters on Lothlórien not only speak of a lost memory of Lórien and Valinor but also foreshadow the loss of the sylvan enchantment once the Elves leave Middle-earth after the One Ring has been destroyed. Lothlórien already starts to slip away as the fellowship leaves the Elven forest behind. To the fellowship, floating away from the forest and Galadriel on the river Anduin, it appears as if Lothlórien itself is “slipping backward, like a bright ship masted with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world”.68 The contrast to the disenchanted and colourless world outside sets the green forest apart once more as a Paradise. Yet, as it is slipping away, it represents a Paradise that is lost to the changing world and to which the fellowship will never come back again. Lothlórien itself belongs to an Elven past and an enchanted world that is about to change and be disenchanted in the Fourth Age, the Age of Man. The presence and protection through the Elven enchantment is ubiquitous within Lothlórien yet lingers only on the margins of the Elven forest Mirkwood. In contrast to Lothlórien, where Galadriel can hold off Sauron’s growing influence, the perilous sylvan wilderness of Mirkwood exhibits an open hostile agency, closely connected to the evil influence of Sauron emanating from his fortress of Dol Guldur in the southeast of Mirkwood. Once known as “Greenwood the Great,” Sauron’s influence infests the forest and “the name of the forest was changed and Mirkwood it was called, for the nightshade lay deep there, and few dared to pass through, save only in the north where Thranduil’s people still held the evil at bay”.69 Although clearly an antagonistic dark forest during the Third Age, the connection to the once mighty Greenwood, where “its wide halls and aisles were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song”70, represents a lost memory of a healthy forest. What is more, however, Mirkwood reveals a lost memory of a majestic and enchanted Elven forest evidenced by the Elven-path running through the forest and a rotten wooden bridge across the stream. Together with Thranduil’s realm in the northern parts of the forest, Mirkwood “still retains the memory of the [Sylvan] Elves that resided there in the past”.71 It is a nostalgic but more so a sad memory of a once enchanted forest that presses on the mind of the traveller, as the Elven presence is either driven towards the edge of the otherwise dark and dangerous forest or fallen into ruins. Therefore, its

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lost memory of a once blessed realm does not provide a comforting and therapeutic experience as in Lothlórien but provokes an uneasiness heightened by the hostile sylvan agency. Nevertheless, hope exists that after Sauron is defeated the forest will once again flourish. In contrast to Lothlórien where the defeat of Sauron diminishes the Elven enchantment of the forest, the expulsion and defeat of Sauron and his minions from Dol Guldur by Lord Celeborn from the southeast and Thranduil from the north does bring a bright future and a cleansing and healing to the infested forest. Once more, the forest is renamed as Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Greenleaves, to represent the restoration of the lost memory. Thus, “wholeness, loss, and renewal mark the three phases, and the memory of the past ties together a deprived present with a redeemed/ fulfilled future”.72 The juxtaposition of the two Elven forests, Lothlórien and Mirkwood, and their version of a lost memory, an Edenic forest directly connected to the Undying Lands and an enchanted sylvan wilderness, reveals an interesting conclusion. Whereas the enchantment of Lothlórien fades through the departure of Galadriel and her people so that “there was no longer light or song in Caras Galadhon”73, the Wood of Greenleaves continues to be inhabited by the Silvan Elves, which help the forest to prosper again, presenting a clear interrelational agency with an ecological thought. The prosperity of the sylvan forest and the richness of the Silvan Elves are intricately linked. The highly emotive memory of the Edenic land of Valinor is lost forever in the Fourth Age, an age in which the Elves’ time has ended, yet the Elven enchantment continues to linger in some places interlinked with the natural environment, such as in the Greenwood of old. The Forest as an Active Memory Not all the fictional forests in the analysed speculative narratives evoke a lost memory of a once vast sylvan wilderness, a vanishing culture or lost Paradise. Some forests and sylvan gardens seem to display an active and present memory. C. S. Lewis’s sylvan garden in his Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956), for instance, actively represents a paradisiacal landscape overtly modelled and grounded in Christian theology. One of the central and most evocative natural images in Christian theology is the Garden of Eden, the Terrestrial Paradise first described in the Book of Genesis. Thus, it is not surprising to find garden images in his work that overtly represent and envision such an Edenic garden, not as a memory but as an active place to seek. The garden image occupies an enclosing position in Narnia’s chronicle, as the central Garden of Life in The Magician’s Nephew (1955) and, more importantly, as Paradise and the final destination and place of salvation for Old Narnians after Narnia has been destroyed in the final instalment, The Last Battle (1956). In The Magician’s

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Nephew, Digory is searching for the Garden of Life, which can be seen as a replica of the biblical Garden of Eden. The Garden of Life is an idyllic garden, enclosed by a high wall and an entrance to the east, with a significant tree standing at the centre of the garden carrying “the apple of youth, the apple of life”.74 The garden even comes with its own warning to only “Take of my fruit for others or forbear”75 and a Witch/serpent who tries to seduce Digory to eat from the ‘forbidden fruit.’ However, in contrast to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Digory does not bite into the apple but keeps his promise to Aslan/God and is rewarded for his faith. Here, the garden does not represent a lost memory of a paradisiacal garden but is the Garden of Life itself in which the character has to overcome temptation. Therefore, the focus is not on the natural or even cultural sylvan place but on the character’s development and the didactic narrative showing the, primarily young, readers the value of high morals. Whereas Lewis created sylvan gardens in the image of the biblical Garden of Eden, other primal forests are not representations of lost wilderness but are the primal wilderness. Here, these forests are either revived memories of ancient forests, as mentioned previously in regards to Shaw’s virgin forest in The Trees, or primal forests not yet cultivated, or more precisely not entirely exploited, by humans. Le Guin’s forest in The Word for World Is Forest and James Cameron’s alien forest in Avatar (2009) are still, for most parts, such sylvan environments of ancient times and not remnants of a once vast sylvan wilderness. They are vast and active forests in which their respective Indigenous sylvan cultures live in a harmonious and reciprocal relationship with the sylvan environment. Nevertheless, the forests, and their cultures, are under threat from colonial exploitation and consequently are on the verge of becoming environmental and cultural lost memories within their worlds themselves. At the same time, however, the primal and abundant forests of the distant planet/moon stand in clear contrast to the environmentally ruined Earth so that, from the perspective of the Terrans, the intact sylvan ecosystem becomes a memory of what they have lost on Earth. In Le Guin’s novella, a devastated Earth, a “desert of cement”76, is effectively juxtaposed to “one big National Forest”77, which is also hinted at in Cameron’s film. Particularly Avatar’s opening scenes reveal a primal forest with its heightened bioluminescence, constructed “so that it could function as a symbol of Earth’s nature as it, to some dedicated environmentalists, ought to be: pristine, unspoiled”.78 However, the pristine and unspoiled sylvan environment does not simply show the audience a forest that ought to be, yet, it evokes a lost memory of a once sylvan wilderness and an overall natural environment on Earth. Through this, Cameron and Le Guin comment on, among other ideas, a

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rapid deforestation within the Capitalocene, executed by a hierarchical imperial power, which has to be held in check. The idea of the primal forests of speculative fictions evoking a lost memory of a once ancient and vast sylvan wilderness is central for raising an eco-sylvan awareness. As remnants of an ancient overarching sylvan ecosystem, the primal forests are indulged in environmental nostalgia speaking of a time gone by, a time when the majority of the world was covered by a natural forest that provided a valuable habitat for flora and fauna. Thus, the environmental nostalgia evoked in the narratives attempts to trigger an emotional response in their audience to appreciate the sylvan wilderness and to realise its endangerment. NOTES 1. Bram Stoker, Dracula (London: Penguin Books,1994), 14–24. 2. Rob Blackwell, The Forest of Forever (Leipzig: Amazon Distribution GmbH, 2015), 88; emphasis added. 3. Doctor Who, “In the Forest of the Night,” BBC One, 45:03, October 25, 2014, emphasis added. 4. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 267. 5. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 288. 6. Ali Shaw, Trees (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 12. 7. Shaw, Trees, 66. 8. Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2014), 39. 9. Holdstock, Mythago Wood, 87; emphasis added. 10. Holdstock, Mythago Wood, 98. 11. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” in Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (New York: New American Library, 1971), 115. 12. Ian Watson, “The Forest as Metaphor for Mind,” Science Fiction Studies 2, no. 3 (1975): 232. 13. Le Guin, “Vaster than Empires,” 118. 14. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 153. 15. Tolkien, Fellowship, 155. 16. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 74. 17. Tolkien, Towers, 74. 18. Tolkien, Towers, 75; emphasis added. 19. Veryl Flieger, “The Forest and the Trees: Sal and Ian in Faerie,” in Tolkien: The Forest and the City, ed. Helen Conrad-O’Brian and Gerard Hynes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 155. 20. Tolkien, Towers, 76.

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21. Peter Kolb, “Microflora and Fauna in Forests,” Climate, Forest and Woodlands, May 16, 2019, https:​//​climate​-woodlands​.extension​.org​/microflora​-and​-fauna​ -in​-forests/. 22. Ali Shaw, Trees (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 71. 23. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 42. 24. Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2014), 191. 25. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 119. 26. Martin, Game, 521. 27. Martin, Game, 572. 28. Martin, Game, 573. 29. Martin, Game, 22. 30. George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 682. 31. Martin, Clash, 682. 32. George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 185. 33. Martin, Storm, 464. 34. Martin, Storm, 232. 35. Martin, Storm, 180. 36. Tolkien, Towers, 321. 37. Tolkien, Fellowship, 465. 38. Doris McGonagill, “In Living Memory: Tolkien’s Trees and Sylvan Landscapes as Metaphors of Cultural Memory,” in Representations of Nature in Middle-earth, ed. Martin Simonson (Zillikofen: Walking Tree Publisher, 2015), 158. 39. Tolkien, Towers, 320–21. 40. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 276. 41. Barron, Ancient One, 44. 42. Robert P. Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 156. 43. Harrison, Forests, 156. 44. Barron, Ancient One (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 29. 45. Barron, Ancient One, 68. 46. Barron, Ancient One, 69. 47. Barron, Ancient One, 69. 48. Barron, Ancient One, 69. 49. Tolkien, Fellowship, 179. 50. Martin, Game, 22. 51. Harrison, Forests, x. 52. Harrison, Forests, 165. 53. Harrison, Forests, 165. 54. Martin, Game, 23. 55. George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 504. 56. Martin, Clash, 810.

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57. Neil Gaiman, “Introduction,” in Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2014), x. 58. Holdstock, Mythago Wood, 15. 59. The shamiga are a legendary tribe that guard the river crossing within Ryhope Wood (Mythago 201). 60. Holdstock, Mythago, 183. 61. Holdstock, Mythago, 132. 62. Holdstock, Mythago, 218. 63. Tolkien, Fellowship, 453. 64. McGonagill, “In Living Memory,” 155. 65. Tolkien, Fellowship, 455. 66. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 221. 67. Tolkien, Fellowship, 488. 68. Tolkien, Fellowship, 490. 69. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), 360. 70. Tolkien, Silmarillion, 360. 71. McGonagill, “In Living Memory,” 153. 72. McGonagill, “In Living Memory,” 153. 73. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), Appendix B, 472. 74. C. S. Lewis, Magician’s Nephew (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 93. 75. Lewis, Magician’s Nephew, 92. 76. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1991), 176. 77. Le Guin, Word for World, 176. 78. Thore Bjømvig, “Outer Space Religion and the Ambiguous Nature of Avatar’s Pandora,” in Avatar and Nature Spirituality, ed. Bron Tylor (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011), 49.

Chapter Three

The Tree as a Diverse Motif and Ecological Symbol

As I have shown, the forest’s agency and various representations are manifold, yet, also the individual tree signifies multiple concepts and ideas. The single tree and its life cycle have long been used to illuminate various aspects of life, such as the cycle of birth, death and rebirth as well as history, which uncovers a close connection between the human and the arboreal sign. The tree’s general material structure with a thick trunk, deep roots and expanding branches—speaking of the most common and stereotypical types of trees—has become a vital emblem for multiple cultural ideas and concepts in various fields of science. This material structure thus provides one of the most prominent ontological models. With its roots firmly planted in the soil, its trunk reaching high into the sky and its branches fanning out, the tree is used to classify, map and especially visualise knowledge and is hierarchical as well as forking relations in fields such as biology, psychoanalysis, logic, linguistics and human organisation in Western traditions. One of the earliest and most well-known example of such abstract visualisation is the genealogical tree, which has been used since the High Middle Ages, initially to display the relations of the royal and noble families. During that time, the metaphor of the tree also started to be used to illustrate societal concepts, such as the Great Chain of Being or the Great Tree of Being, which classified all forms of beings on a hierarchical scale. The tree’s various layers of metaphors and symbols are plentiful and “have fed the flames of creativity because [the trees] possess not only a variety of parts but because they stand over and against human generations in a way which demands acknowledgment”.1 Those arboreal metaphors and motifs as well as the tree’s agential realism are omnipresent in the speculative fiction analysed, where the individual natural tree becomes a marker of place, an arboreal monument of time and history as well as the centre of mythology. However, the destruction and felling of the individual tree is the most potent 73

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motif of human maltreatment of nature and a critical comment on the treatment of nature in the Capitalocene. THE TREE AS A MARKER OF PLACE Due to their rootedness within a particular location, individual trees are undoubtedly linked to their specific place. In this regard, trees (as well as other plants) are potent motifs and emblems of identity and national, as well as local or personal, places. On a national level, the leaf of the sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) for example has become the national symbol of Canada, integrated in the Canadian coat of arms. Further flora-related national icons include the silver fern (Cyathea dealbata) of Aotearoa-New Zealand; an icon that is heavily featured in the nation’s sportswear such as of the national rugby team the All Blacks and the national netball team the Silver Ferns. Furthermore, the sturdiness of the oak tree makes it a great national symbol in many countries where it commonly symbolises strength and fortitude. The German Oak, for instance, and the oaken leaf became symbol within the German language during the Romantic nationalism of the nineteenth century, with the German Revolution of 1848/49 and the foundation of the German Reich in 1871, as a symbol of resilience and immortality that was supposed to strengthen the feeling of national unity.2 On a similar note, because of the destruction of the English forests through human exploitation or natural catastrophes, the English oak forests became, in addition to being the provider of timber for the royal fleet, a national symbol of liberty. The “Heart of Oak” (1759) is for example invoked in the marching song of the British Royal Navy and was equated with English identity that stood against their enemies, initially against the Spanish Armada and later the absolutist Catholic France.3 The specific attributes of individual tree species and their local appearance seem to be valuable for the creation of a national identity and image. A specific tree symbolising a national identity is represented in the White Tree of Gondor in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. As offspring of Telperion, the sacred White Tree of Valinor, the White Tree of Gondor is planted in the Place of the Fountain upon the highest level of Minas Tirith in front of the High Court, and thus in a central location of highest cultural significance. The lineage of the White Tree, from Telperion to Nimloth the Fair in Númenor, is directly linked to and ultimately signifies the Númenorean kings who once came to Middle-earth from their ancient and sunken island of Númenor. In an old song, the great treasures of the Númenoreans are mentioned, amongst which the White Tree occupies a central position. It is the “seven stars and seven stones and one white tree”4, which identify the line of Isildur as the

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reigning monarchs of Gondor. On the one hand, the stones and tree are material objects with their own thing-power and, on the other hand, they are symbols of Gondorian monarchy depicted on the banner of Gondor. Consequently, the White Tree of Gondor is first: a symbol, a signifier, of the King. Second, it is a thing signified. The tree on the banner of the King refers to the actual White Tree sitting in the Court of the Fountain. The banner in turn refers to the King again. Thus the King and the Tree are connected in a recursive manner, ultimately signifying each other.5

This association between the White Tree and the Gondorian monarchy is thus manifested and overtly portrayed in the prosperity of both showing a clear interconnectivity: During the long royal absence in Gondor, the White Tree has withered yet a new sapling begins to sprout as the new king approaches. With Aragorn, heir of Isildur, ascending the throne of Gondor at the end of the Third Age, the balanced relationship between the White Trees of Gondor and the old Númenorean monarchical lineage is restored. The White Tree, placed at the heart of Minas Tirith and thus marking the centre of the Gondorian realm, is consequently a symbolic link to the monarchy and their connection to Valinor and, additionally, a significant national symbol portrayed on the royal banner of Gondor. A further arboreal marker of a specific region is presented in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, where two majestic holly trees signal the border of the land Hollin and the end of the Elven-way leading towards the Doors of Moria. As the holly is a dominant token of that land, they have been honoured in the name of the region, Hollin, and employed as sentries indicating the region’s borders. In this way, their transformative agency is implemented by shaping this particular part of the land. At the end of the Elven-road, the fellowship encounters these two hollies towering “overhead, stiff, dark, and silent, throwing deep night-shadows about their feet, standing like sentinel pillars”.6 The hollies function here as a marker of place twice. On the one hand, they indicate the end of the road and simultaneously point towards the hidden Doors of Moria set in the wall between the two trees. What is more, the hollies are not just silent sentinels marking the end of Hollin and the entrance to the mines, they are additionally positioned in a clear contrast to the otherwise bleak surrounding landscape. The valley in which the entrance to Moria is located is presented in a gloomy and depressing light with the dammed lake emanating a threatening presence. Along its shore, the ancient road is now deserted and almost destroyed, where at its end dead shrubs are rotting away. Only the two hollies seem to be thriving, thus, they signal the exceptionality and endurance of the trees. As the only living entity in this forsaken valley, the hollies provide a glimmer of hope through the perseverance of the trees.

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A prominent tree dominating a local landscape can be found, once again, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The beloved Party Tree, located in the communal party field in Hobbiton, is one of the most cherished common trees in Tolkien’s legendarium. In the beginning of the narrative, the tree is not described in such meticulous detail as Tolkien’s other trees and landscape in general but is only presented with its general material stature and particular location; even its name, the Party Tree, is only revealed towards the end of The Return of the King (1955). Nevertheless, the centrality of the tree and its inclusion in the daily lives of the hobbits reveals the tree’s significance and an ecological thought. As the only tree on the field, the Party Tree is a significant landmark and becomes a central part of the community. This is especially revealed at Bilbo Baggins’s birthday party. Rather than excluding the tree from the celebrations, the main tent is built high enough so that the Party Tree can easily fit inside the tent. In this way, the common tree is directly integrated into the festivities, as it is furthermore decorated with many lamps from which a warm and pleasant light shines out, under which Bilbo holds his famous speech. The significance and love for the Party Tree becomes particularly evident in the hobbits’ grief after its destruction. As an individual arboreal agent, the Party Tree exhibits an interrelational bond with the hobbits and its routine and purposive actions are valued in their own rights here. Consequently, the Party Tree becomes not just a part of the physical landscape but also part of the hobbits’ community so that they become, according to Callon and Law, a hybrid collective, an intricate and complex relationship between culture and nature. THE TREE AS A MONUMENT OF TIME AND (CULTURAL) HISTORY One of the prominent notions concerning the symbolic value of the tree is its general longevity that connects it to the environment and human/cultural history as a witness to the past. In terms of species, the bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) located in California’s White Mountains are the oldest trees in the world and amongst those the oldest individual tree called “Methuselah” can be found dating back more than 4,800 years. Consequently, it is a vital source of arboreal identity and Milarch, the “Man who planted trees,” cloned this champion tree in his project. In Europe, the oldest living tree is a Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii), located in Greece and believed to have taken root in 941. The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), the Patagonian cypress (Fitzroya cupressoides) and the western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) are further species that can live to a very old age. The coastal redwood “General Sherman,” located in California’s Sequoia National Park, is approximately

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2,500 years old and thus the oldest living redwood in the world. In terms of height, the tallest redwood, and simultaneously the tallest tree in the world, is “Hyperion” with a height of 115.72m, located in California’s Redwood National Park.7 In addition to the single champion trees, clonal colonies can be classified as the oldest living organisms. Clonal colonies—genetically identical trees clustered together in a colony and interconnected by a single root system—are much older than individual trees. As reported by the U.S. Forest Service, a clonal colony of more than 40,000 single quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides), located in Fishlake National Forest in Utah, is approximated to be 80,000 years old. The oldest individual trunk of such a clonal colony was found in Sweden: Old Tjikko, a 9,550-year-old Norway spruce.8 These numbers show that the forest in general, but also individual trees, have been around a long time—not comparable to any animal or human—and have thus experienced the changing of their environment throughout time. In local and inhabited environments, the historical component is extended to the history of the particular place and the interrelationship between tree and the human. Individual trees have consequently become living material agents of time, especially in connection to their specific environment. As mentioned, the giant sequoia (the redwood) is amongst the oldest and tallest living organisms found in our world and central to Barron’s ecological fantasy novel The Ancient One. With an age of 1,423 years, the fictional Ancient One is connected to a time pre-dating the rise of modern civilisation and so becomes a living arboreal monument for the changing of time. Simultaneously, it represents stability as it continues to grow throughout the centuries. The first encounter with the Ancient One and the grove of majestic redwoods highlights the redwoods’ magnitude and age by presenting an amplified portrayal of the serene scenery. As solemn as a group of pilgrims gathered to pray, they stood together in silence. Drawing in a deep breath, Kate gazed at the uplifted boughs arching three hundred feet above her head, their lacy branches permeated with light. At the base of the trees, heavy burls hung like jowls, bordered by fibrous bark as delicate as strands of hair. Powerful roots clenched the soil firmly, as they had for centuries upon centuries.9

The spiritual aspect of the tree is once again revealed by portraying the giant redwoods as “pilgrims gathered to pray” whose silent composures and the picturesque light permeating through the branches evoke an image of a sublime grove. Their strength and magnitude furthermore establish the redwoods as impressive living monuments rooted in the earth for centuries upon centuries. However, even they are dwarfed by the oldest of them all, the Ancient

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One. The singularity of the Ancient One indicates its centrality within the ancient grove and signals the environmental but also emotional need to protect these ancient redwoods; as is Kate’s and her aunt’s overall mission. The Ancient One has witnessed centuries of life flourishing around it so that it represents a living and growing arboreal monument of time. In a time lapse, in which Kate is transported back into her own time after her adventure in the mystical past, the Ancient One reveals its longevity to Kate. In a passage of endless seasonal cycles, the Ancient One presents the serenity of an untouched nature as well as its battles with natural elements, such as fire, wind and earthquake, or infectious deceases. Its growth and reaction to outside influences throughout the centuries exposes its arboreal agency in the form of routine and purposive actions; its life becomes ecologically creative throughout the centuries. Furthermore, the tree exhibits reflexive actions when it heals from fires or copes with internal deterioration. On an intra-relational level, the Ancient One provides an intricate network for the sylvan ecosystem. All this time, the Ancient One remains strong, becoming a witness of time until the moment of its destruction by loggers. Nevertheless, even its stump, or more precisely the signs affixed to the respective tree rings, speak of the Ancient One as a 1,423-year-old witness to history, albeit a now rather lifeless one. Located in the new national park, the stump of the Ancient One has become a historical monument where its history within the sylvan ecosystem is acknowledged. Signs indicate the year of the eruption of the local volcano, 1452 A.D., or the scars from fires, 1583 A.D. and 1847 A.D.. Additionally, its history is set in reference to the wider anthropocentric world. The crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor in 800 A.D. is mentioned or the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 A.D.10 Through the inclusion of significant historical and cultural events, the purposive agency of the Ancient One has been reduced to a certain degree. However, it is an effective way to connect human history with environmental history and simultaneously show that humanity is only a small part of the world’s history. The signs fixed to the stump thus raise an ecocritical awareness by highlighting the longevity and magnitude of one single ancient tree, as opposed to the rather short history of a single person and pleads for a protection of those living monuments of time. The juxtaposition of the long life of a single tree against the fleeting lives of man is evident in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire; with his latest book A Dance with Dragons (2011) especially exploring this concept in more detail. The weirwood in general is part of the ancient godswoods in the North and thus an arboreal monument of ancient times and beliefs itself. However, its central heart tree in particular, a weirwood with a carved face, is an explicit witness of history observing the changing of times. The heart tree has “deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old,

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those eyes; older than Winterfell itself”.11 Therefore, the heart tree outdates the cultural life of Winterfell, highlighting nature’s overall permanency and the fact that the (sylvan) wilderness was first. Linked to paganism and animistic believes, the heart tree is worshipped by the Northerners, as the trees inhabit the old gods of the North and watch over the world and its people. Brandon Stark’s final chapter in A Dance with Dragons deals explicitly with the heart tree as an arboreal storage of memory. The chapter ends with Bran’s first lesson in the true meaning of being a greenseer, being able to connect his consciousness with the heart trees and see through their eyes, by revealing a time lapse of Winterfell’s history. The ancient heart trees store cultural memories, yet, through their longevity additionally represent a remembrance of earth and nature at a time before humankind. In Martin’s world, the heart trees provide a glimpse into the past as well as the future. For the rooted trees, time is a different concept to the ever-rushing mobile man, as Lord Brynden explains: Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood . . . a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood.12

In providing a direct glimpse into the past, present and future, the heart trees are overtly connected to the history of Westeros and offer a valuable perspective for the greenseers. The greenseers’ ability to skinchange provides them with “[a] thousand eyes, a hundred skins, [and particularly] wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees”.13 On the one hand, the trees’ ancient wisdom stems from their long life and enduring observation of (cultural) history unfolding in front of them. Yet, they are also rooted deep in the earth, providing a routine and purposive arboreal agency and signalling nature’s primeval knowledge about grander concepts beyond the individual’s (cultural) history and nature’s strength and endurance in general. The weirwoods and the central heart trees are consequently a monument of time due to their longevity; they are witnesses of (cultural) history through their carved faces as well as significant arboreal agents that provide deep-rooted knowledge of the earth. The “trees will teach you. The trees remember”14 is not just an advice for Bran but also a direct address to the reader in a time of environmental crisis. The appreciation of the tree as a monument of time and especially as the centre of cultural history can additionally be discovered in Brooks’s novel The Elfstones of Shannara, where the Ellcrys is a living monument of the Elven history and the history of the Four Lands. For the Elven people, the

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Ellcrys is their most significant tree located in the capital’s Gardens of Life. Created out of the life-forces of the earth by the magic of the Elves and their allies to banish the evil forces from their lands, her history dates back centuries to a time before human civilisation. Consequently, the Ellcrys and the creation of the Forbidding, the enchanted limbo from which no evil escapes as long as the Ellcrys lives, has been part of the living history of the Elven people and is thus a cultural foundation for them. Although created magically, the enormous strength of the earth and the remarkable persistency and longevity of the common tree is emphasised and used as a significant constant for the Elven people. Always present, the Ellcrys has survived major episodes of unrest, of destruction, war and the changing of times, to become “a symbol of permanency”15 throughout the centuries never to falter. Her constant presence, as a living barrier containing the evil forces in the Forbidding, is however under threat in The Elfstones of Shannara and her century-long history will eventually end. THE TREE AS THE CENTRE OF MYTHOLOGY Tree Worshipping Mystified and often considered sacred, tree symbols can be found all around the globe, emphasising the widespread belief that trees are seen as a link between the physical and spiritual world, as well as a home for spirits and gods. Tree cults, with their worshipping of trees within sacred groves, therefore date back to antiquity and possibly even further to Palaeolithic times. Paolini’s fictional Menoa tree, first introduced in Eldest (2005), the second book of his Inheritance Cycle, is such a sacred tree where spiritual and cultural practices and rituals are performed. The tree is the centre of the Elven forest Du Weldenvarden and the sacred location where the Elves perform the ancient ceremony of the Agaetí Blödhren, the Blood-oath Celebration honouring their pact with the dragons. During this celebration, Eragon is affected by the potent magic of the Elves, which transforms him into a human-elf hybrid. Celebrated only once in a century, the Agaetí Blödhren becomes a joyful event where the entire forest is decorated, “especially around the Menoa tree, while the tree itself was adorned with a lantern upon the tip of each branch, where they hung like glowing teardrops”.16 Setting the ceremony during the evening hours well into the night, the glowing lanterns bath the entire sylvan scenery into a mythical light where everything and everyone becomes enchanted. The centrality and spirituality of the Menoa tree is apparent and is furthermore highlighted through her connection to the elf Linnëa. The creation story of the Menoa tree is a story of spurned love and

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transformation. Once upon a time, the elf Linnëa fell in love with a younger man, who eventually lost interest in her and cheated on her with a younger woman. In grief and rage, Linnëa stabs the young man and, knowing that she has done a horrible deed, vows to leave the world. Consequently, she unifies with the oldest tree in the forest forging thus a symbiosis and alliance between human and tree, truly becoming a hybrid collective. The animistic quality of the tree seems to stem from the connection to the consciousness of the elf Linnëa, yet the symbiosis between the elf and the tree becomes the spiritual centre of the Elven kingdom. The spiritual connection and worshipping of individual trees that represent deities or ancestors is furthermore evident in Cameron’s Avatar, where two of the three central trees, the Tree of Voices and the Tree of Souls, are deeply connected to the spiritual world of the Omaticaya clan, the Indigenous sylvan clan on Pandora. As a direct link to their ancestors, the Tree of Voices is a profoundly spiritual place and a storage of cultural memory, in which the Omaticaya can hear and communicate with the voices of their ancestors through a direct neurological link. This neurological link, the tsaheylu or the bond, is the most meaningful and poignant connection between the Omaticaya and the Tree of Voices, as well as the entire Pandorean environment. All Na’vi people are equipped with a tail used for balancing but also to connect with other life-forms physically and thus cognitively. Through connecting their queues to other Pandorean beings, be it flora or fauna, the Na’vi are able to share one mind and communicate directly with other life-forms, becoming one intricate network sharing a consciousness. The organic life-forms on Pandora, such as the various trees, are thus animated identities with an organic agency of their own. Nevertheless, the two central trees are more than arboreal entities. Similar to the Tree of Voices, the Tree of Souls, or the Mother Tree located at the Well of Souls, occupies a significant position in the mythology and cultural identity of the Omaticaya clan.17 The huge and ancient willow is the spiritual centre of their live and the most direct connection to Eywa, the supreme deity of Pandora. At the base of her huge trunk and within her outstretched branches, the Omaticaya communicate with Eywa in spiritual rituals and ask for help, as in the case of Jake Sully, to fight against the annexation and destruction of the Pandorean forest. The singularity of the ancient mythological tree and its interconnectivity between Eywa and the Pandorean life is especially portrayed in the magnificent roots connecting with the other roots in the forest. The Well of Souls is depicted as a natural amphitheatre ringed with majestic willows with the Mother Tree at its very centre. Her roots spread all the way into the well, where they join with the roots of the other willows.18 The roots of the Tree of Souls are the brain of the tree where information and memory are stored and transported to the roots of

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the surrounding willows, thus building one interconnected rhizome network that stores their ancestral knowledge. Consequently, the Tree of Souls, as well as the Tree of Voices, are individual arboreal agents interconnected through the vast network of the forest world and significant centres of the mythological and cultural belief of the Omaticaya clan. The Tree at the Centre of Mythology Whereas individual trees are considered animistic and are worshipped, specific trees represent significant archetypal motifs of individual and often similar belief systems found throughout the world, such as the idea of the tree of life or the tree of knowledge. In Christianity, the Biblical Tree of Life and especially the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Hebrew Garden of Eden is one of the most significant trees in religious tradition. The tree of life embraces all beings of creation and connects them to each other, a concept that is depicted in the belief system of Barron’s Tinnanis in The Ancient One. The majestic Tree of Life, engraved in the cavernous halls of the Tinnani people, reveals the tree as the centre of creation, supporting and arranges all life forms along its branches. Highlighting the range of flora and fauna found on the Tree of Life, including humans and mystical people, Barron highlights the overall biodiversity on Earth and positions the individual species in an interconnected network. In this description, Barron avoids presenting a hierarchical structure amongst the various species by not ascribing them a specific and set position on the Tree of Life. Therefore, he actively circumvents the critic of building hierarchies when using the model of a tree and focuses on the idea that truly everyone, humans and flora and fauna, is part of the hybrid collective, this overarching and interrelated network: “each held a particular place in the pattern. Each stood as a separate individual, each stood as a member of the whole”.19 As part of this balanced network, each species is thus connected to the others and their actions will affect everyone else; as well as the Tree of Life itself representing in this case the environment and Earth at large. This idea of interconnectivity and responsibility to the environment is at the heart of Barron’s ecocritical novel. Whereas trees of life hold all life-forms in their branches, trees of knowledge are seen as a vertical connection of the two opposing worlds of heaven and the underworld, with deep roots that reach into the underworld, a trunk that centres it on earth, and upper branches and the top that stretches out into heaven. As the most ancient and common symbol, the world tree can be found in many cultures, for instance in the Mayan culture, in Malaysia, India, North America, China, Japan, Egypt and Polynesia where they represent the core connection between the various realms.20 One prominent example of such a world tree is Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree of Norse mythology. The tree is the

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centre of the Norse cosmos with the Nine Worlds positioned around it and connected through “its branches [that] spread out over the whole world and reach up over heaven”.21 In this belief, the tree is the core of the cosmos and its well-being is directly connected to the welfare of that cosmos. Odin, the all-father, hanged himself from the tree for nine days to receive the runes, which additionally allow for an understanding of and influence over worldshaping powers. Consequently, Yggdrasil is also connected to the concept of knowledge and sacrifice. Furthermore, according to legend, the arrival of Ragnarōk, the destruction of the entire universe and the death of the gods, will be heralded by an earthquake and the trembling of Yggdrasil. Nevertheless, the tree will survive the end of the world. Norse mythology and its world tree Yggdrasil is a regular source of inspiration in many speculative fictions, so, for instance, in Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed fantasy novel American Gods (2001). In a crucial moment, Mr. Wednesday, as an aspect of the all-father Odin, is killed and the main protagonist Shadow holds the sacred vigil while tied to a giant tree. The silver-grey tree clearly represents Yggdrasil and Shadow’s vigil re-enacts Odin’s time hanging from the world tree.22 During his nine-day vigil, Shadow himself gains great knowledge and insight into Wednesday’s overall schemes. Martin applies the concept of acquiring knowledge through a physical connection to the world tree to his portrayal of Lord Brynden, the last greenseer, in A Dance with Dragons. As the last greenseer and Bran’s teacher, Lord Brynden holds a central position in Bran’s narrative arc closely resembling Odin in reference to the hanging from the world tree. Lord Brynden was once a man of the Night’s Watch but has dedicated his life to the weirwood trees. Not hanged but locked in a “woven weirwood throne”23, Lord Brynden has become deeply connected to the weirwood and lives in a very close symbiosis with them. The roots of the weirwood run through the flesh of the man and so both become one, sharing knowledge and memory. The most remarkable feature of the Lord Brynden, however, is the loss of one eye: Seated on his throne of roots in the great caver, half-corpse and half-tree, Lord Brynden seemed less a man than some ghastly statue made of twisted wood, old bone and rotted wool. The only thing that looked alive in the pale ruin that was his face was his one red eye, burning like the last coal in a dead fire, surrounded by twisted roots and tatters of leathery white skin hanging off a yellow skull.24

With this physical feature, the connection to Odin, the One-eyed God, becomes even more striking. Odin sacrificed one of his eyes in order to drink from the Well of Mímir, out of which Yggdrasil grows, to receive the knowledge of the cosmos. Similarly, Lord Brynden has lost one of his worldly eyes to the weirwoods but gained a far greater sight. Seeing through the

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eyes of the heart trees, as well as any other skin he chooses, Lord Brynden sees beyond his own perception and receives information and knowledge of Westeros. Whereas Odin left Yggdrasil after nine days, Lord Brynden will remain interlocked with the weirwoods for the rest of his already waning life and it is speculative to assume that Bran will take his place on the weirwood throne and sacrifice himself. Thus, providing a potentially significant insight into the, hypothetically, final battle between the living and the Others in A Song of Ice and Fire. World trees, such as Yggdrasil, hold the cosmos and are central aspects in their respective creation myths, as can be seen in Tolkien’s mythological cosmogony of Middle-earth. As depicted in The Silmarillion (1977), the beginning of days sees the creation of the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin, as the two most central trees in Valinor and all the subsequent history of Middle-earth. After the foundation of Ëa, the cosmos, by Ilúvatar and the establishment of Valinor by the Valar, Yavanna’s song brings Telperion and Laurelin to life in a moment of pure and tender creation. This poignant moment clearly marks the beginning of Tolkien’s overall mythology and situates the two trees at its centre. In their alternating bloom, Telperion, with his dark green leaves and silvery flowers, and Laurelin, with her young green leaves and golden flowers, emit a radiant glow spending light in Valinor and so structure the days. The trees’ significant routine action, their alternating bloom, thus indicate an arboreal agency that is creative in its light-bringing aspect vital to the development of the cosmos and the beginning of history. As the elder tree, Telperion’s first bloom, described as a “white glimmer of a silver dawn”25, signifies the Opening Hour when the counting of time begins. Consequently, “these trees not only have a central place in the physical layout of the undying city of Valmar, the capital of Valinor; they are also central to the early chronology of events in the mythic Elder Days of Middle-earth”.26 Titled as the Years of the Trees, this mythological history of the Elder Days is clearly structured around the prosperity of the Two Trees of Valinor. During those early years, Telperion and Laurelin bring joyful bliss and enchantment to Valinor, until their final destruction through Melkor. Consumed by jealousy and creed, the Valar Melkor brings with the giant spider Ungoliath a great darkness to Valinor that consumes the Two Trees and extinguishes their light. The death of Telperion and Laurelin is the most painful moment in the history of the Elder Days and in their moment of destruction the Valar experience their deepest sorrow.27 The dying light of the Two Trees thus marks the end of Valinor’s blissful years. Nevertheless, it simultaneously heralds the beginning of a new era, in which the light of Telperion and Laurelin endures far beyond Valinor and the early history of Arda. Upon the Trees’ death, “Telperion bore at last upon a leafless bough one great flower of silver, and Laurelin a single fruit of gold”28, which the Valar set into vessels to conserve their radiance.

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As the moon (Telperion’s silver flower) and the sun (Laurelin’s golden fruit), those vessels ultimately bring light not just to the lands of Valinor but also illuminate the lands of Arda, Middle-earth, as well. Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans summarise the significance of Telperion and Laurelin by stating, “that (1) The Silmarillion begins with these powerful images of nature, (2) the glory and bliss of Valinor are closely associated with these trees, and (3) the Two Trees are closely associated with all of life itself”.29 Thus, within Tolkien’s cosmology, the Two Trees of Valinor clearly take the central position by not only giving light and life in the beginning of time, but also through their preserved light that is omnipresent even long after they themselves have perished. Tolkien’s Two Trees of Valinor not only provide the source of light that illuminates the entire cosmos, but also the ancestors of an arboreal lineage connected to the prosperity of the Númenorean people. Consequently, their offspring are at the centre of the Númenorean, and their descendant’s, culture. Like the meticulous portrayal of the various genealogies of Elves, man, hobbits, dwarves and so forth, Tolkien provides a complete arboreal lineage beginning with Telperion, the White Tree of Valinor, reaching all the way to the beginning of the Fourth Age at the end of The Return of the King. Telperion’s first descendant, named Galathilion, was given to the Elves, who loved the White Tree the most of all the things in Valinor. In his chapter “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” at the end of The Silmarillion, Tolkien offers a brief summary of Telperion’s offspring all the way to the White Trees of Gondor, formerly Minas Ithil, and shows the trees’ deep connection to the lands of Valinor. Providing the elder trees with proper names, some even with an epithet such as Nimloth the Fair, and frequently focusing on the trees’ noble genealogy, shows the singularity of the White Trees and their lineage and presents them as arboreal individuals, which are honoured and cared for throughout the ages. The trees’ lineage additionally signify the lineage and prosperity of the Númenorean kings and their descendants. The far-sighted Númenorean king Tar-Palantir prophesised the close interrelationship between the wellbeing of the White Tree and the Númenorean kings. Consequently, the lineage of Telperion is overtly linked to the wealth and endurance of the line of kings and ultimately becomes the heraldic symbol of the Gondorian monarchy and the perseverance of the Númenorean kings still loyal to the Valar. The various descendants of Telperion are thus positioned at the centre of Númenorean culture and their well-being reflect and mirror the moral attitude of the people, so that when the kings decline the tree decays too. This can be seen when king Ar-Gimilzôr, Tar-Palantir’s father, forsakes the ancient link to the Valar, forbidding the use of the Elven language and any interaction with the ships from Tol-Eressëa, and neglects Nimloth the Faith, which begins to decline as

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a result. Contrastingly, the endurance of the Númenoreans and their faithfulness to the Valar is revealed in the honouring of the White Tree, as portrayed in Isildur’s deed to save a fruit from Nimloth the Fair. An iterating cycle is played out, whereby a fruit is saved before the destruction or decline of the parent tree to keep the tree’s lineage intact and alive and to look into a potentially prosperous future. As a result, the line of Telperion, with Galathilion and Celeborn, to Nimloth and ultimately to the White Trees of Gondor, is the centre of the ancient Númenorean culture and, when in bloom, a sign of its strength and prosperity. THE TREE AS AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN MALTREATMENT OF NATURE Not just the forests are considered metonymies for the environment; the individual tree signifies nature as well. Healthy and opulent trees represent a vital and prosperous environment, whereas barren and/or dead trees can speak of an environment infected by, for example, insect-borne diseases or natural catastrophes (i.e. bushfires, volcanic eruptions, and so forth). However, particularly within the Capitalocene, the dead tree has frequently become a sign of human’s negative impact on the environment. In literature and especially speculative narratives, the image of the dead tree is thus a potent symbol of an ecological degradation caused by human’s neglect and abuse of nature. In the title sequence of Denis Villeneuve’s highly acclaimed neo-noir science fiction film Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the audience is introduced to a world with a collapsed ecosystem, where synthetic farming becomes a means to prevent a global famine. This collapsed ecosystem is directly presented in the opening scenes where the main protagonist, blade runner K, is sent out to the protein farms to “retire” (execute) the Nexus-8 replicant Snapper Morton, one of the older versions of replicants. Flying over the Californian landscape filled with scientific farming sections build close together, a desolate and dead environment comes into view and the ecological degradation of the future becomes immediately apparent. The segmentation of the scientific greenhouses is reminiscent of agrarian fields, however, they lack all the quality of the organic fields and any of their vibrant colours. The monotonous tone through the lack of lush and earthly colours (such as greens, the golden colour of wheat etc.) generate a gloomy atmosphere, which is dramatically highlighted in the dead tree at Morton’s farm. Coming partially into view as a reflection on the window of K’s vehicle, the tree’s leafless branches creep hauntingly into view. Once revealed in its entirety, the skeleton of the tree takes up a prominent position in the otherwise devoid landscape and leaves an imposing image of a barren and lifeless nature.30 The

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tree, supported and held in place by steel ropes, is dead and is thus, like the entire environment, deprived of any natural life and agency. The monotonous colours of grey and white used for the tree as well as the surrounding natural world amplify the depressing picture of a desolate landscape. The opening scene of Blade Runner 2049 presents the audience with a world where there is “no restorative nature that exists outside urban dilapidation and pollution, perhaps a nod to the looming scarcity of nature for which we must begin to prepare”.31 The desolate landscape over which K flies presents a pessimistic future for Earth, yet the single dead tree evokes the most poignant loss of a healthy environment. The film thus comments on “the twin dilemmas of contemporary capitalism: that of looming ecological catastrophe, and the other of enhanced digital automation”.32 The dead tree becomes an icon of this looming ecological catastrophe; however, as will be discussed later, the dead tree can also function as a symbol of hope in the course of the film. A similar dead white tree presenting a decline in natural growth yet more so a decline of civilisation is depicted in Tolkien’s barren White Tree of Gondor in The Return of the King. The remaining tree of the sacred lineage of Telperion stands dead in Gondor’s Court of the Fountain. The juxtaposition of a sweet fountain within a well-tended courtyard and the lifeless tree bewilders Pippin. Nevertheless, he remembers the prominent line from the poem “Seven stars and seven stones and one white tree”33 and so makes the connection between the tree and the ancient heirlooms of the Númenorean kings. The sight of this singular dead tree, described in an evocative manner, creates a mournful atmosphere in which the tree becomes a potent representation of grief. The tree literally bends its heavy branches wearily over the fountain creating an image of sorrow and decay. The decay of the White Tree is thus associated with the lack of natural growth. Gondor is a majestic stone city that has slowly fallen into decay itself and has become a lifeless and silent city. Legolas remarks on the city’s emptiness and links it to the lack of natural growth. The therapeutic agency of nature, and especially trees, as Legolas wants to plant trees that will not die to bring back life and joy to the city, is suggested here. So far, the city is almost empty of life effectively highlighted in the dead White Tree, signifying the decline of the noble lineage of Númenorean kings as well. After the death of the last king of Gondor, King Eärnur, his loyal steward Mardil ruled in his name and, because no pure descendent of the Númenorean line could be found, the stewards continued to rule Gondor. With the death of Belecthor II, about eight hundred years into the rule of the Stewards of Gondor, the White Tree perished as well but was left in peace until the rightful heir to the throne would return. During the centuries without a king, a king that is connected to the ancient realm of Númenor and the faith to the Valar, the city has slowly fallen into emptiness and prevented it, and its people, from growing. Denethor II,

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the last Ruling Steward, denies this growth and change by denying the return of the true heir and King of Gondor, choosing death rather than allowing for a wholesome change.34 This attitude and decline of natural growth correspond directly with the death of the White Tree, which remains guarded in the Court of the Fountain as a compelling reminder of the decline of Gondor, but also signals hope for the return of the king. The withered tree at Morton’s farm and the dead White Tree of Gondor have succumbed to the general degradation of the environment and a decline of humanity appreciative of nature and the environment and have thus become a potent image for the overall neglect and destruction of the natural environment. Nevertheless, it is the active, and unnecessary, process of felling trees that paints the most violent picture of human’s maltreatment of nature. I will discuss three compelling examples of violated trees in the following, which provide a commentary on wanton industrialisation and human dominion over nature and so overtly ask for an eco-arboreal and eco-sylvan awareness. The focus is here on the individual tree, its death and the painful emotions its stump or the act of destruction evokes in the various characters, as well as the reader. As some of the oldest living trees, the logging of the redwoods and particular the oldest of them, the Ancient One, is overtly criticised in Barron’s novel. Within the frame narrative, Kate and her Aunt Melanie try to save the ancient redwood grove from local loggers, however, they do not succeed; the Ancient One is being felled. This particular resolution of the conflict is noteworthy as it presents the reader with the violent death of a living organism and the devastation of nature. Hiding within the hollow of the Ancient One, Kate is joined with the life and perception of the tree and thus also shares her agonizing pain caused by the chainsaws of the loggers. By having Kate share the Ancient One’s pain, Barron uses the universal understanding of the relation between human and tree to establish empathy with the tree and its suffering. Sharing a body, the Ancient One and Kate, tree and human, are interconnected which underlines the needed shift in principles towards an idea of animism of nature and an understanding of our interconnectivity. The emotional and physical link between young girl and tree emphasises the tree’s liveness and ascribes the tree a form of (anthropomorphic) consciousness through which a positive response of the reader towards trees and nature is evoked. Consequently, the death of the Ancient One and its diminution to objects leaves Kate, and the reader, with an emptiness and a feeling of surrender. Moreover, with the death of the tree, it is now denied its previous arboreal agency as an interconnected being with its routine and purposive actions bringing life to the entire forest. Kate realises that with the felling of the Ancient One the vast arboreal ecosystem, with its myriad of flora and fauna, is destroyed with one single human action.

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The fictitious fight against the logging of redwoods mirrors thus the activism found in the real-life California, where coastal redwoods flourished across some two million acres of California’s coast before the 1850s. For thousands of years the local people managed to live in harmony with the ancient trees, understanding the importance of the unique forest ecosystem. However, with the beginning of the gold rush in 1849, the redwoods were logged into near oblivion to keep up with the growing demand for lumber. Today, only 5 per cent of the original old-growth coastal redwood forest remains, having a deep impact on species and the general ecological system.35 The remains of Barron’s Ancient One evoke an immense sense of loss of the living tree which continues to stand as a monument of its destruction. Arriving at the new national park a year later, Kate finds the stump of the Ancient One representing the toll nature pays for human, excessive, progress and asks for the necessity of preserving the wilderness and its interconnected environment, an idea Barron highly encourages in his novel and his activism in general. The stump of the Ancient One, with its signs indicating various historical and natural events during the tree’s life, consequently becomes an evocative memorial for the maltreatment of nature. A further highly emotional encounter with a felled tree is presented in Tolkien’s second-to-last chapter of The Return of the King, where the communal Party Tree has been violated and carelessly discarded. Coming back from the war against Sauron, the four hobbits return to a changed Shire: The once pastoral idyll has been turned into an industrialised and corrupted land by Saruman. It is the final setback for the hobbits as the war against evil has been won followed by a time of peace and rest. The damage to the agrarian Shire and the central village of Hobbiton, the ultimate home, shows the destructiveness of an unchecked industrial progress through corrupted men. Throughout the narrative, the reader is repeatedly confronted with devastated landscapes and violently cleared forests that evoke a deep sense of loss and pain, especially at Isengard and the enclosing Fangorn Forest. Those are all disturbing sights, however, the felling of the beloved Party Tree is the ultimate blow nature, and the hobbits, have to suffer: “‘They’ve cut it down!’ cried Sam. ‘They’ve cut down the Party Tree!’ He pointed to where the tree had stood under which Bilbo had made his Farewell Speech. It was lying lopped and dead in the field. As if this was the last straw Sam burst into tears”.36 In Sam’s passionate outburst, the significance of this individual common tree, with its connection to the specific place and part of the communal history, becomes palpable once more. The sight of Bag End and the cut-down Party Tree presents a grave and devastating picture of an abused landscape. This is significant, as the four hobbits have been through war and loss and suffering before, yet, the felled Party Tree, as the heart of the Shire, triggers a highly emotional response. The tree’s killing and the fact that it had been

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discarded and left lying in the field as a worthless object demonstrates an absolute indifference towards nature. In contrast to the felling of the Ancient One, which at least serves a materialistic purpose, the wood of the Party Tree is utterly disregarded and left to rot, highlighting the oppressive attitude of Saruman and his cohorts and the apparent worthlessness of nature in an excessive industrialisation. The abuse of nature, and Indigenous cultures, is a central theme in Cameron’s Avatar, which culminates in a war between the indigenous Na’vi and the colonisers from Earth and is symbolised in the destruction of the forest and the individual trees. For the Terran mining company and military contractor, the forest is just an inanimate object with its individual trees, especially the Home Tree, standing on top of the largest deposit of the desired unobtanium. Consequently, they must be removed. In a scornful tone, Colonel Miles Quaritch orders the assault on the trees and mocks the Na’vi’s spiritual belief in Eywa. Quaritch is aware of the cultural and spiritual significance of the various trees and uses it to physically as well as spiritually defeat the Omaticaya. The strikingly visualised demolition of the gigantic Home Tree by multiple combat aircraft demonstrates most vividly Quaritch’s utter disregard and malevolence towards the environment.37 The tree is hit and fire spreads through the roots, trunk and branches and suffocates everyone inside. It is, similar to noticing the cut-down Party Tree, the ultimate blow for the Omaticaya and depicted in a highly emotional scene. An eerie stillness signals the impending doom, which is initiated by the cracking sounds of bursting wood and the eventual collapse of the majestic tree underlined with a rising dramatic score. The visualisation of the tree’s collapse presents an apocalyptic scene in which the Omaticayas’ panic and their struggle to survive gain the upper hand. The scene ends with the Home Tree crashing heavily to the ground, brought down by the military force of the colonists. Once more, a numbing score highlights the horrors and magnitude of the destruction of the living organism. In this scene, the issues of the Capitalocene, as well as colonial and military invasion, are overtly exemplified and the violent collapse of the central tree underlines the ongoing conflict between human progress and a healthy and animated environment. THE TREE AS A SYMBOL OF HOPE AND NEW LIFE The dead and violated tree is clearly a sign of the disregard of nature and human’s negative impact in the era of the Capitalocene, yet, its healthy and young counterpart brings new life and hope for a prosperous future. As I have mentioned before, the fate of the individual tree, similar to the entire forest discussed subsequently, has become exemplary for the environment

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as a whole. In this way, even barren trees still standing become a monument for the strength and endurance of nature and offer a small sign of life. Such is the case with the dead tree at Morton’s farm in Blade Runner 2049. The tree, although barren and apparently dead, is still standing upright and thus functions as a reminder of the perseverance of nature too. What is more, K finds a single flower at the base of the trunk hinting at life within this desolate landscape. This sign of life can also be seen metaphorical as the tree and the flower mark the burial site of a female replicant who died during a caesarean section and so hint at a life assumed impossible: a child born of a replicant. The prospect of new life and prosperity is closely linked to the green and blossoming tree, especially when following a strenuous and trying time. The deciduous tree represents best this step into renewal when nature awakes in springtime; yet, the new sapling illustrates best the beginning of new life heralding a new era. I have highlighted the close relationship between the prosperity of Tolkien’s White Trees and the fortunes of the lineage of the Númenorean kings before and thus there is no doubt that the reawakening of the tree will also bring a new and flourishing era to Gondor. This understanding is part of an ancient saying in which the renewal of the White Tree brings back the blessed times: “And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed, / and he shall plant it in the high places, /and the City shall be blessed”.38 The prophecy speaks about the heir to the throne of Gondor and so Aragorn, after the final victory against Sauron at the gates of Mordor, finds a blossoming sapling of the White Tree of Gondor on the snowy slopes of Mount Mindolluin. The sapling has survived for years hidden in the cold and harsh mountains to await the return of the king. Bathed in the glorious light of the morning sun, the discovery of the sapling marks a significant moment for Aragorn, as it is the sign of his new reign in Gondor. By planting this sapling in the court of the fountain, the new White Tree begins to grow promptly heralding a change in Gondor and a healing in the city of Minas Tirith. With the flowering of the White Tree at the beginning of Aragorn’s reign, a new season sees nature and people returning to the stone city indicating its potential of progress and growth.39 Therefore, “the flowering of the White Tree is a reassurance of the ultimate victory over evil and intimately connected with time, memory, and renewal”.40 The young sapling of the ancient arboreal line represents a new life and a new era bringing hope of a bright and prosperous future. The victory over evil and a new potential of growth is furthermore illustrated in the restoration of Tolkien’s beloved Party Tree. The new tree in the party field of Hobbiton becomes a central part of the renaturalization of the Shire. After the scouring of the Shire, the return to the idyll and a prosperous future is achieved through the rehabilitation of the pastoral landscape, especially through the planting of trees. Sam uses the gift from Galadriel to heal the loss of the trees, which becomes “one of the most powerful images

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of redemption”41 in The Lord of the Rings. Galadriel’s gift contains some earth from the gardens of Lothlórien and her blessing that the new gardens will bloom like nowhere else in Middle-earth. It is Sam, the “gardener and lover of trees”42, who travels through the Shire in autumn planting seeds and Galadriel’s earth throughout the Shire where once beloved trees stood. However, special attention is paid to Hobbiton, the heart of the Shire. Here, in the place where the Party Tree once stood, Sam plants the single silver nut and awaits the coming spring, which surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty. In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeed a mallorn, and it was the wonder of the neighbourhood.43

This passage creates an idyllic picture of a peaceful and flourishing nature. Spring has come and brought with it the beginning of a new life cycle where everything is fresh and in bloom. As a restoration of the beloved Party Tree, the sprouting of the new tree is the most potent image of recovery and growth in the Shire, showing the therapeutic agency of trees. The new tree is even more significant as it is a mallorn, a tree of the Elven kingdom not found anywhere else in Middle-earth. As the wonder of Hobbiton, it connects the Shire to the enchanted forest realm of Lothlórien and through that ultimately to the ancient realm of Valinor. At the end of the narrative, nature accelerates its natural growth to renaturalize the place and heal it from the wounds of extensive industrialisation. The outburst of trees and the beauty and distinction of the mallorn leads to an even greater idealisation of the pastoral Shire in which the narrative of The Lord of the Rings comes to a restorative end. Ending the narrative with a positive outlook of nature surviving and coming back in the form of a new sapling is likewise realised in Barron’s novel The Ancient One. Although Kate and her Aunt Melanie cannot prevent the loggers from felling the Ancient One, the entire crater is eventually saved from deforestation by becoming a national park. In this way, the central theme of Barron’s frame narrative, the preservation of the ancient redwoods and their forest ecology, is partially achieved by Kate and Melanie. Even though Kate is confronted with the sorrowful remains of the Ancient One a year after her adventures, new life begins to sprout in the national park as well. The discovery of the young redwood seedling is the last event the reader is presented with in the novel. It is a delicate yet highly potent image of the revival of nature and the beginning of a new life cycle after such a devastating blow. The seedling is still young and small; nevertheless, its potential to become a sturdy redwood itself is evident, especially through the preservation status of

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the park. Growing right next to the stump of the most ancient redwood in the grove, the direct juxtaposition between human’s maltreatment of nature and nature’s perseverance highlights the tree’s therapeutic agency to heal the scars and bring peace and comfort. Furthermore, it connects the young sapling to the life of the Ancient One and emphasizes once more the profound reverence of the majestic redwoods. Overall, this final image of the young tree brings the novel to a satisfactory conclusion, by focusing on a hopeful and protected arboreal and sylvan future in the national park. The sprouting of young saplings is an encouraging and wholesome sight, one that signals life and hope for a prosperous future, especially in contrast to the negative impacts of deforestation and abuse of nature in the Capitalocene. Paul Evans summarises the connection between the tree and human culture and history in a newspaper article stating that: there is an inextricable link between people and trees, especially old trees. From all the thousands of uses we have put them to, and all the fears and desires we have projected onto them, human cultures around the world have emerged from trees. Now that we know our abuse of trees has brought ruin to them and us, we turn again to the venerable ones, searching for some resilient spirit, eternal, or near as damn it.44

As a vital element of the therapeutic agency of the trees, their process of photosynthesis are fundamental for humans’ well-being and the earth’s health. Consequently, various projects are established to promote the planting of trees for the benefit of everyone, such as the aforementioned Tree Charter in the UK or the global TreeChain Network. Initially established in December 2017 in Australia, the TreeChain Network strives to: “Protect the condition of the primary forest system, Develop a tree network throughout the Earth & Create a balance ecosystem between humankind and nature”.45 Through global campaigns such as the “Re-Forest” or “Green Beach” programme, the TreeChain Network aims to plant eleven billion new trees be 2030 and thus helping the environment. Consequently, the tree, as well as the entire ecosystem of the forest, is one of the most central representative and metaphor for our entire environment and its protection and preservation has become one of the most significant fights to protect the Earth at large. Therefore, a re-evaluation of nature is central and an appreciation of the tree’s and forest’s agency is needed. Frodo reconsiders nature and realises the purposive agency of the tree when walking within the forest of Lothlórien: “never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as a forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself”.46

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NOTES 1. Douglas Davies, “The Evocative Symbolism of Trees,” in The Iconography of Landscape, ed. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 41. 2. Kai Uwe Schierz, “Von Bonifatius bis Beuy, oder: Vom Umgang mit heiligen Eichen,” in Bonifatius: Heidenopfer, Christuskreuz, Eichenkult, ed. Hardy Eidam et al. (Erfurt: Stadtverwaltung Erfurt, 2004), 139–45. 3. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Random House, 1996), 154–64. 4. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 253. 5. Susan Jeffers, Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relations in The Lord of the Rings (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2014), 72. 6. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 394. 7. Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledges (Hudson: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 15. 8. “Oldest Tree Ever Documented,” Guinness World Records, accessed October 10, 2022, https:​//​www​.guinnessworldrecords​.com​/world​-records​/oldest​-tree​-ever​ -documented. 9. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 71. 10. Barron, Ancient One, 303. 11. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 23. 12. George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 502. 13. Martin, Dance, 495; emphasis added. 14. Martin, Dance, 501. 15. Terry Brooks, The Elfstones of Shannara (New York: Del Rey Books, 2015), 75. 16. Christopher Paolini, Eldest (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 454. 17. Bert Olivier, “Avatar: Ecopolitics, Technology, science, Art and Myth,” South African Journal of Art History 25, no. 3 (2010): 11. 18. Avatar, DVD, directed by James Cameron (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2010), 1:48:38. 19. Barron, Ancient One, 272. 20. Jane Garry and Hande A. Birkalan, “Trees, Various Motifs,” in Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook, ed. Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy (London: Routledge, 2016), 464. 21. Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson: Tales of Norse Mythology, trans. Jean I. Young (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954), 42. 22. Neil Gaiman, American Gods (London: Headline, 2004), 490–509. 23. Martin, Dance, 194. 24. Martin, Dance, 499. 25. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), 43.

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26. Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans, Ents, Elves and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 7. 27. Dickerson and Evans, Elves, Ents and Eriador, 10. 28. Tolkien, Silmarillion, 116. 29. Dickerson and Evans, Elves, Ents and Eriador, 11. 30. Blade Runner 2049, DVD, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2018), 03:43. 31. Matthew Flisfeder, “Blade Runner 2049 (Case Study),” in The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, ed. Anna McFarlane et al. (London: Routledge, 2020), 145. 32. Flisfeder, “Blade Runner 20149,” 146. 33. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 23. 34. Susan Jeffers, Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relations in The Lord of the Rings (Kent: Kent University Press, 2014), 70–71. 35. Bourne, Joel K., “The Super Trees,” National Geographic Magazine, accessed December 05, 2022, https:​//​www​.nationalgeographic​.com​/magazine​/article​/redwoods​ -earths​-tallest​-trees. 36. Tolkien, Return, 360. 37. Avatar, 1:35:34–1:40:19. 38. Tolkien, J. R. R., The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 292. 39. Jeffers, Arda Inhabited, 72–73. 40. Doris McGonagill, “In Living Memory: Tolkien’s Trees and Sylvan Landscapes as Metaphors of Cultural Memory,” in Representations of Nature in Middle-earth, ed. Martin Simonson (Zillikofen: The Walking Tree Publisher, 2015), 163. 41. Ina Habermann and Nikolaus Kuhn, “Sustainable Fiction: Geographical, Literary and Cultural Intersections in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” The Geographical Journal 48, no, 4 (2011): 271. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1179​/1743277411Y​ .0000000024. 42. Tolkien, Fellowship, 488. 43. Tolkien, Return, 369. 44. Paul Evans, “Long Live Trees,” The Guardian, December 29, 1999, https:​//​ www​.theguardian​.com​/society​/1999​/dec​/29​/guardiansocietysupplement1. 45. “What We Do,” TreeChain Network, accessed October 20, 2022, treechainnetwork.com/what-we-do/. 46. Tolkien, Fellowship, 456.

Chapter Four

The Forest as a Sylvan Voice and Sylvan Agent for the Environment

THE FOREST AND TREES AS SYLVAN AND ARBOREAL VOICES FOR NATURE Ecocriticism is concerned with a reorientation of thought and a learning of a new language that includes the natural world. Speculative fictions, with their departure from consensus reality and shift away from an anthropocentric point of view by including non-human characters, have introduced an animistic language in which they acknowledge nature’s own form of articulation and intrinsic value. Those narratives present the reader not just with a reoriented language about representation, but ultimately let nature speak for itself directly; nature, here in the form of the forests and trees, has its own distinctive and immediate voice. In literate societies, the capacity to speak and articulate one’s own thoughts is strictly reserved for the human subject. In contrast to animistic societies, which regard the natural world as animated and capable of articulation, Western cultures predominantly see nature as a silent and inanimate object. Christopher Manes reviews the silencing of nature in his essay “Nature and Silence” (1992) and states that, especially due to the introduction of literacy and a Christian reading, the previous animistic perspective on nature has drastically changed since the medieval period. Christian theology in the Middle Ages started to ascribe symbolic meaning to nature and identify it as a sign of the glory of God, therefore disregarding nature’s intrinsic value and identity separated from human concepts. This relation to the heavens was illustrated in the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being, with “Man” as highest form on Earth. This position was later continued during the Renaissance in which humanist thought reinforced human superiority over nature. Humanism with 97

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its focus on reason and intellect undoubtedly elevated the human further and contrasted them against “dumb animals,” lowering the status of nature accordingly. Rationality and speech have thus become a significant trait of humans, which constitutes humankind’s apparent superiority over nature since the Renaissance. Manes consequently asks for: a viable environmental ethics to confront the silence of nature in our contemporary regime of thought, for it is within this vast, eerie silence that surrounds our garrulous human subjectivity that an ethics of exploitation regarding nature has taken shape and flourished, producing the ecological crisis that now requires the search for an environmental counter-ethics.1

Adjusting the way we speak about nature is central; yet, it is maybe even more vital to acknowledge the concept that nature is alive and has its own distinct method of communication as well. The animism of nature is a fundamental concept in the analysed speculative fictions. Particularly the forests and trees, as cultural and historical metonymies for the environment, adopt the position of voices for the entire environment in the narratives. Whereas in narratology voice generally refers to the narrator of a story, I will discuss the concrete communication of the individual characters associated with the forests, therefore their individual speeches, in my study. To begin with, nature’s own voice is discussed with an analysis of the sentient tree characters. These sentient trees clearly represent the forest’s and thus nature’s voice and can be classified in three categories of proactive sentient trees: a) Rooted proactive “common” trees, b) rooted proactive trees with facial animation, and c) mobile proactive trees. This chapter focuses on the representation of the forest and its trees as a powerful voice for nature and discusses the overall ecocritical message and a possible transition to the world of the reader. A SYLVAN NATURE VOICED Rooted Proactive ‘Common’ Trees In the genre of speculative fiction, the environment is largely considered animated and conscious. The awareness of the overall environment is repeatedly paralleled and often elevated above human consciousness in the way that it consists of a vast intricate network linking all the life-forms of the environment to one extensive and interconnected system, which represents an inter- and intra-relational agency. The principle of interconnectivity and coherency within the ecosystem is vital and effective so that nature is often attributed one connected mind of its own in literature. The singularity of

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nature’s mind for instance is highlighted in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker of the Dead (1986), where the Hive Queen, the matriarch of an alien race called the Buggers, observes: “There’s a mind here [on Planet Lusitania]. Much clearer than any human mind we’ve known”.2 The idea that nature has its own vast consciousness and communication system is not at all a distinct concept within speculative fiction but observable in actual forests. As I have already outlined in the introduction, trees are connected through their vast root network and intricate fungal network through which they are able to pass on specific information. Furthermore, trees can communicate through air by using specific scent signals. Nevertheless, the concept of a nature truly voiced, nature being able to communicate through speech process and own language across the barriers of different species, is still a rarity even in speculative worlds and thus often surprise even the characters. Paolini’s main protagonist Eragon in The Inheritance Cycle is stunned by the sheer presence and awareness of the great Menoa tree. Approaching the tree, Eragon expands his mind to take in all the life-forms in the clearing but is amazed to find that even the floral world radiates with awareness. Eragon comes to the, for him shocking, conclusion that the Menoa Tree is conscious: “It’s awake! . . . it’s intelligent”.3 Although being a Dragon Rider and therefore aware of the sentience and intelligence of non-human beings, Eragon initially does not extend the concept of awareness and intellect to the floral world. The same is true for the dragon Saphira, who, although mostly displaying the ancient wisdom of the dragons, is still a young and at times overconfident and impulsive dragon displaying a sense of superiority due to her extraordinary strength. For both of them, nature is still silent and unconscious and thus subconsciously not on the same hierarchical level as the human characters and the mighty dragons. The anthropocentric silencing of nature is repudiated in the various narratives through the individual trees’ mastery of speech and communication. As a rooted proactive sentient character, Paolini’s Menoa has her own consciousness and intellect and is able to communicate with her surroundings as well as the humans/humanoids and dragons through telepathy. She is Du Weldenvarden’s central and sacred tree and the guardian of the forest. Described as a massive pine tree located at the centre and thus heart of the forest, her roots stretch out into the circumjacent forest. The tree’s main concern for the forest, taking into consideration everything that flourishes and grows within her ecosystem, establishes her as a protector and representative of the forest. When Eragon and particularly Saphira attack her in order to obtain a hidden sword, acting upon a divination that they will find a weapon underneath the tree that will help to overthrow the tyrant of Alagaësia, they are threatened by the enclosing forest and smothered by the

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Menoa tree herself. Eragon and Saphira only consider their own position here, albeit having the safety of all Alagaësia in mind. They focus on their own needs and try to procure the sword with every possible means. While being restrained, Eragon pleads with the Menoa tree to consider the consequences for Alagaësia, including her forest, if he cannot defeat the tyrant Galbatorix. As an answer, she states that: “If he tries to kill my seedlings, then he will die. No one is as strong as the whole of the forest. No one can defeat the forest, and I speak for the forest”.4 Two central ideas are highlighted in the tree’s response. The strength and endurance of the entire forest as well as the individual tree as the central figure and thus voice for the forest ecology. This interconnectivity can be seen in the forest’s overall reaction to the threat. The Menoa tree is the centre of the forest and, through their intricate communication network, is able to coordinate the forest’s response. It closes in on Eragon and Saphira triggering a feeling of claustrophobia and vulnerability. The individual tree as the heart and representative of the forest is not barely a symbolic or metaphorical idea assigned to the tree by others, but a position actively acquired and articulated by the tree herself. By overtly speaking for the forest, the Menoa tree ultimately embodies a powerful arboreal voice for the entire forest of Du Weldenvarden and simultaneously displays the vital concepts of interconnectedness and animism central in ecocriticism. The Menoa tree’s proclamation of interconnectivity and strength of the forest is a potent one. With her, Paolini created a vital tree character and a representative for nature by staying close to the physical characteristics of a natural tree. As the Menoa tree is described as a pine tree with extremely limited anthropomorphic features, in particular without any external ones, she is one of the sentient tree characters that resembles closely common trees of a forest. Her ability to communicate with Eragon through telepathy however sets her apart from the rest of the forest and promotes her as a voice of nature. In Brook’s The Elfstones of Shannara for instance, the Ellcrys speaks to the Chosen, the six young Elves who are her caretakers, through thought transference as well. Predominantly communicating with Amberle, the Ellcrys uses their strong telepathic connection to send her on a quest to save the tree and so protect the Forbidding. Although the Ellcrys might not directly speak for the forest as such, she symbolises a balanced environment, where her eminent death is associated with the arrival of the primordial evil and the subjugation and destruction of their world. Thus, she represents the central part of a complex relational system. Whereas the Menoa tree and the Ellcrys overtly consider their wider environment and their own position within it, other communicating tree characters, such as Barron’s High Willow (The Tree Girl, 2013) or Brandon Sanderson’s Telepathic Trees in his novella Sixth of the Dusk (2014), rather concentrate on their individual narrative and their own needs. What all of these communicating sentient trees have in common

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is the use of telepathy, the direct transmission of thought and feeling, to connect with other species, with humans or animals. The use of telepathy as a means of communication is ostensibly because, by modelling them closely on actual trees, these tree characters do not need to possess an oral cavity and muscles to produce speech sounds and thus a spoken language. However, the telepathic communication is moreover linked to a spiritual connection between nature and humans. Even though the telepathic link exists primarily between the tree and a minority of individuals, such as Eragon and Amberle, the immediate and absolute exchange between the two species underlines and advances the concept of interconnectivity within the entire environment and across species, bringing humans closer to understand and appreciate the strength and significance of the forest and nature. Rooted Proactive Animated Trees To overcome the obstacle of limited contact through selected telepathy, the influence and communication coming from the tree has to be extended and seemingly facilitated so that more characters have the ability to receive and understand nature’s message. This is effortlessly achieved by attributing anthropomorphic features to the outward appearance of the tree, in particular by providing the tree with a face, and especially a mouth and lips and some form of vocal cords, to speak directly to other characters. The image of a face in the tree’s bark is a classical and most common use of anthropomorphism, not restricted to the literary world. As an optical illusion, cognitive psychology analysis the concept of pareidolia, the recognition of shapes and faces in natural objects, such as faces in trees. In these cases, the brain interprets the world around us, which can affect our disposition towards them: we might encounter a peaceful and benevolent face in a tree in a sunlit forest or a grotesque grimace in a dark and primal forest; once again, the paradoxical concept of the hostile and therapeutic forest is revealed. In speculative narratives, such marginally anthropomorphised trees predominantly represent old and wise characters who advice the main protagonists on their journeys. Withered, benevolent faces in the bark speak of ancient wisdom and a vast intelligence to provide the characters with vital information and a wider knowledge of the world. Grandmother Willow in Disney’s Pocahontas (1995) is such a wise spiritual advisor. The ancient willow counsels Pocahontas to follow her dreams and to listen to the spirits of the earth who live in the water and in the earth.5 Her position within the forest is not overtly discussed in the film, however, through a generalisation of Native American traditions and a “harmony with nature” attitude of the Indigenous people a traditional idea of animism and interconnectivity is implied here. Similarly, in the virtual universe of the Nintendo series The

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Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), the player encounters in the Great Deku Tree a guardian and protector of the Kokiri Forest. Animated as a colossal tree with an ancient face, the Great Deku Tree sends out Link, the player character, on a quest to save the tree, for the “fate of the forest, nay, the world, depends on [him]!”.6 The Great Deku Tree is overtly addressing the player and so effectively raises an eco-sylvan awareness in the player-audience. A curse is running through the tree, described as a “climate of evil” that effects the entire forest. The tree is the guardian of the forest and the Kokiri Forest, as “the source of life, has stood as a barrier, deterring outsiders and maintaining the order of the world”.7 An attack on the tree is also an attack on the forest and will affect the entire environment. As a guardian, the Great Deku Tree therefore becomes a direct voice for nature and alludes to the trees’ importance within the forest ecology, establishing them as metonymies for the virtual environment and simultaneously signalling the tree’s importance for the environment in general. Mobile Proactive Trees The aforementioned sentient trees are compelling speakers for nature; however, their rootedness confines them to their particular places and so limits their influence and outreach of an ecological message. They are individual and distinct characters, which seem to have no direct equal. Therefore, they can be seen as exceptions for a voiced nature. Taking this concept to an advanced level, tree characters that talk and walk overcome the limitations of rootedness. This third classification of sentient trees, the mobile proactive trees, combines speech and action, and so exhibits a more developed form of voice for nature through a more direct form of agency. The highly anthropomorphised characters, trees with faces (with eyes, nose and mouth) and moving limbs such as arms and legs, do raise the question whether these characters truly represent nature or are more aligned with humanoid characters. Lewis’s dryads in The Chronicles of Narnia clearly blur the boundary between nature and the humanoid. In fantasy literature such as Lewis’s chronicles, dryads are depicted as hybrids of trees and humans. Lucy describes the dryads with botanical but more so with anthropomorphic features. The “birch-girls were tossing their heads, willow-women pushed back their hair from their brooding faces to gaze on Aslan, . . . [or] shaggy oak-men, lean and melancholy elms . . . all bowed and rose again”.8 Likewise, Tolkien uses a high form of anthropomorphism, as well as animation, when depicting his famous tree character Treebeard and the Ents in his legendarium. The debate about the specification of Tolkien’s Treebeard and the Ents reveals the complexity of these hybrid characters. Initially, Treebeard is described as “one old stump

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of a tree with only two bent branches left: it looked almost like the figure of some gnarled old man”.9 Here, it is just an old tree within the forest, where the mind recognises anthropomorphic features and so estranges an otherwise familiar plant. However, the first direct description of the character Treebeard discusses the question of tree or man overtly itself. Whether it was clad in stuff like green and grey bark, or whether that was its hide, was difficult to say. At any rate the arms, at a short distance from the trunk, were not wrinkled, but covered with a brown smooth skin. The large feet had seven toes each. The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard, bushy, almost twiggy at the roots, thin and mossy at the ends.10

The meticulous and expressive portrayal of Treebeard reveals Tolkien’s great care for trees in general, yet it rather seems to describe a humanoid character than a tree. Veryl Flieger makes this claim, stating that Treebeard as an Ent does not qualify as a sentient tree, as sentient nature, but is, as a distinct and humanoid species closer related to the hobbits.11 Andrea Denekamp, furthermore, identifies the Ents as a “distinctive cultural community” and states that “rather than being trees, Ents represent trees”.12 Their creation as shepherds and thus protectors for the floral world sets them apart from the natural forest. The highly anthropomorphic features, not just physical attributes but also language and culture, support this claim. Nevertheless, Treebeard and the Ents see themselves as part of the Fangorn Forest and thus as part of nature. Susan Jeffers analyses the Ents according to their relationship to their environment and expresses that “Ents are beings in Middle-earth who complicate readers’ notions of who counts as human [and, for that matter, who counts as nature]. They look, act, and think like trees, but they speak. By being connected with Manes’s [silent] ‘nature’ and yet speaking, they are nature voiced”.13 The status of these hybrid characters, Ents as well as dryads, complicates the notion of a voiced nature and trees speaking for the environment. However, their immediate connection to the trees and the forest classifies them more accurately as tree/nature characters than humanoid characters. Especially the further descriptions of the Ents focus distinctly on the botanical features of trees and their various species, such as birch and elm, than look for anthropomorphic characteristics. Overall, Tolkien’s nature of Middle-earth is a nature voiced, not just so within Fangorn Forest. On various occasions, the characters point towards an animistic nature. While travelling across the mountain pass of Caradhras for instance, the fellowship hears “eerie noises [and] sounds . . . of shrill cries, and wild howls of laughter”.14 Although they discuss the possibility that the weather might be controlled by someone else, Aragorn dismisses the notion of human interference by attributing the noise to the wind. Human

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interference or not, Middle-earth does consist of a sentient landscape with an implied agency and voice, which is consistent within Tolkien’s concept of arresting strangeness and the idea of a voiced nature. The Ents, as the most elaborate and most comprehensive form, are thus an immediate voice for and of the forest and thus nature. They were once created by Ilúvatar, the supreme deity of Tolkien’s cosmology, as “Shepherds of the Trees” in order to protect them from the axes of the dwarves and to “speak on behalf of all things that have roots and punish those that wrong them”.15 As stewards of the forest, they occupy a vital position for nature and become the forest’s advocates. With their elaborate oral history and language of Old Entish, the Ents have a literate complex culture and represent directly “nature voiced”.16 As the Ent and simultaneously called Fangorn, Treebeard represents the entire forest and functions as an educator for the understanding of and respect for nature for the two hobbits, Merry and Pippin. Their meeting and subsequent conversations in The Two Towers are filled with passionate and stimulating passages, evoking an emotional response from the hobbits whilst affecting the reader as well. Treebeard’s language is alive with emotive imagery lamenting the loss of the once dense and widespread forest. In addition, he recounts in a haunting ballad the gloomy story of how they lost the Entwives. Reminiscing about an untroubled past full of plenty set against the present destruction of the forest to fuel Saruman’s war industry, Treebeard demonstrates Tolkien’s own distress about the maltreatment of nature, and, additionally, generates an emotional relationship between the forest and the characters/reader. Treebeard represents a powerful ecocritical perspective by focusing solely on nature and, initially, not taking part in the affairs of men. Understanding the forest as a complex ecosystem with its own history and memory filled with prosperity, but also prone to violence from within (as in the case of the Old Man Willow) and from without, is vital in order to step away from the forest as a plain commodity for humankind and appreciate nature as something more profound. Appreciating the general forest ecology and understanding its overall significance helps to widen the characters’ and reader’s horizon to an ecocritical comprehension of the environment as such. With his Ents, Tolkien created positive and powerful representatives for nature who are able to communicate openly with other characters and across species to advocate a harmonious and appreciative relationship with nature. Problems of an Anthropomorphic Language The idea of a voiced nature depends profoundly on the trees’ ability to actively speak and communicate across species as well as on them being understood by the other characters. The use of a spoken logocentric language in literature, commonly reserved for humans and humanoid characters, is a powerful tool

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to articulate ecocritical thinking. However, it can additionally be considered problematic as it emphasises the highest form of anthropomorphism and so de-naturalises nature. By utilising a human speech system, the tree characters are anthropomorphised in order to make them and nature’s plight more comprehensible and apparently worthwhile to consider. As a result, the ecocritical voice of the trees still appears to be subservient to an anthropocentric worldview, which highlights the idea that we still have to “raise” nature to the level of human understanding in order to be able to apprehend its significance. Talking trees correspond in the language of the human characters, and thus it can be argued that anthropomorphic tree characters still operate within the concept of anthropocentricism. Distinct “floral” languages are, nevertheless, detectable in speculative fiction as well, which occasionally leads to a misunderstanding between the species. A prominent example of a communication barrier due to different languages can be found in Marvel’s Groot of the race of the Flora Colossus in the Marvel Comics (MC) as well as Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Groot’s celebrated catchphrase “I am Groot!” is his sole utterance and its meaning is hardly understood by the human characters; only a few characters, such as the anthropomorphic racoon Rocket and the God Thor, have no difficulty to comprehend the fine nuances of his communication.17 Nevertheless, the use of a universal language helps to establish an environmental communication between the tree and human characters to raise an ecocritical awareness. Once again, the most advanced tree species in terms of language are Tolkien’s Ents who, as Tolkien stated himself, are “composed of philology, literature, and life”.18 The Ents are equipped with a complex language of their own, which facilitates oral literature in forms of poems and songs and thus cultural memory. As a philologist, Tolkien took great care in the creation of his various languages spoken in Middle-earth, with Old Entish revealing a close connection to earth and nature. Treebeard speaks in a “deep voice like a very deep woodwind instrument”19 and, even when speaking the Common Tongue, his language is filled with earthen sounds. Tolkien comments on the Ents’ language in his appendix and describes it as “unlike all others: slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive, indeed long-winded”.20 The language’s uniqueness and complexity make it difficult for others to learn Old Entish and so it remains the sole linguistic property of the Ents. Nature’s language seems to be too advanced for others and so the tree characters have to use the common language. However, we can also find reverse situations, humans learning the tree’s language. In Card’s The Speaker of the Dead, for instance, the Pequeninos (Piggies), the native humanoid inhabitants of Lusitania, speak with the trees directly in the “Father Tongue,” a rhythmic drumming on the tree. The Piggies are biologically connected to the trees, the Mother and Father Trees are their

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ancestors, and so they use a common language that suits the tree to communicate with each other. The Father Tongue initially has been reserved for the Piggies, yet some of the humans from the Lusitania colony have learned the language as well to speak with the Father Trees. Although their conversations might not particularly focus on ecological topics, it is significant that not nature has to learn a new language, but humans have to go out of their way to understand nature better in this narrative. Having considered the problems that arise with the attribution of anthropomorphic features, the analysed tree characters nevertheless are nature characters and thus represent a voice of and for nature. Through anthropomorphism, the authors ascribe speech and language to the apparently inanimate objects, so that the trees as individual nature characters speak for the forest and in extension for nature and thus representing a voiced nature. Consequently, the focus lies on the empowering qualities of a voiced nature. Through the communicating trees, nature claims its own voice in order to narrate its own story and educate the other characters on the significance of a healthy environment and a balanced relationship with it. In this way, the arboreal characters as representatives become individual proactive arboreal agents in the narratives, one of the most powerful images of a nature voiced. It is precisely this immediate correspondence between nature and the other characters, and thus the audience as well, that is vital for forming an ecological thought and for establishing a shift in perspective. Ultimately and in contrast to Manes’s idea and lament of a silent nature, nature in the speculative worlds is not a silent and inanimate object but a potent living entity with a conscious mind and an ability to communicate even across species. An idea that has to be transferred to the primary world of the reader as well. A Sylvan Nature Mediated Nature is not always this distinctly voiced and so able to speak directly for itself in the form of nature characters, such as the individual sentient tree characters. In addition to those nature agents, nature is furthermore represented through allies. Human mediators between the forest and other human or humanoid characters are vital for an ecocritical understanding of the environment and an awareness of the forest’s vital position within and for the overall ecosystem. In this position, the mediators become educators who repeatedly shine a light on the value of the forest and human’s (mal-)treatment of it, thus holding up a mirror to the characters and the reader alike. In the beginning of the 1970s, the American children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, Dr Seuss, wrote his ecocritical fable The Lorax (1971) in which he discusses the plight of the environment and the danger of humans’ maltreatment of it. Dr Seuss directly addresses the anthropocentric issues

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of the Capitalocene in his fable. With the humanoid character the Lorax, Dr Seuss created a significant mediator for the environment who speaks for the Truffula trees and confronts the human character, the Once-ler, with their destructive behaviour against nature. Criticising the extensive logging for an industry, the story of the Lorax and deforestation requests an environmental activism with the ultimate appeal that “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.”21 The mediator’s direct ecocritical address is an address to the reader. It has consequently a far-reaching educational effect to consider once own behaviour towards nature. Highlighting the significance of the forest and the trees for a healthy environment and promoting a balanced relationship with nature, the mediators establish themselves as vital allies for nature and significant moderators between nature and human characters. Individual characters and particular groups of people living in harmony with and primarily within the forest provide an eco-friendly relationship and interaction with nature, where nature and humans/humanoids are seen as equals. Due to their understanding of an ecological thought and their multifaceted interconnection with the forest, the sylvan cultures are most often mediators between the environment and the characters venturing into the forest world. In Cameron’s film Avatar for instance, Jake is educated on the animism and interconnectivity of nature by the indigenous Omaticaya Neytiri. In her lessons, Neytiri teaches Jake about the flow of energy that connects all living things and the spirits of flora and fauna within the primal rainforest. She sets the example of a respectful and considered interaction with nature. Neytiri, for instance, gets angry with Jake for using a blinding torch at night although, due to the bioluminescence of the forest flora, no artificial light is needed. Furthermore, she highlights the balanced relationship amongst the different species, establishing everything as part of Eywa, their nature deity. Eywa and the Pandorean forest do not communicate directly, such as the Ents or the Menoa tree, and so Neytiri and the Omaticaya in general are humanoid spokesperson for the forest ecology and a mediator between nature and the ignorant Terrans. On a similar note, Martin’s children of the forest, the ancient humanoid race recognised as the original inhabitants of Westeros, can be considered mediators for nature in A Song of Ice and Fire. Driven into hiding, the children of the forest represent a mythical nature community, living in a close connection and even symbiosis with the weirwood trees and the forest. Beyond the Wall, the children of the forest reveal their own history to Bran and his companions and provide a lecture about an aligned existence with the environment. Jojen Reed, a young crannogman with greensight himself, explains the children’s and the crannogmen’s way of living in a harmonious and balanced relationship with nature by acknowledging that “Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks

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and elms and willows, . . . were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone”.22 An equilibrium between nature and people is central to the sylvan cultures, equally to Barron’s mythical Tinnanis (The Ancient One), reflected in all their facets of behaviour towards the environment. For the outsiders arriving in the forest world, the sylvan cultures lead by good example and thus provide a mediating position between forest and character, as well as a declaration for the significance of nature in general. In The Word for World Is Forest, Le Guin overtly discusses this value of the forest for nature at large as well. For the indigenous Athsheans, the forest is their central habitat and cultural foundation and, thus, the most significant and valued place on their planet. The Athshean themselves are connected to the forest in many ways, as it is their central habitat but also recognised as familial association. The connection between Athshean and the forest is expanded to the general interdependency between the forest and the overall environment. The Terran anthropologist Raj Lyubov explains the importance of the forest for the entire environment in a meeting with high-ranking personnel from various disciplines in the Headquarter in Centralville. After four years of exploiting the forest on Athshe and so creating uninhabitable and dead wastelands, Lyubov brings to mind the severity of over-deforestation and the destruction of vital ecosystems by reminding everyone of its consequences that have already wrecked the environment on their home planet Earth. He explains further, “The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest”.23 The equalisation of forest and world is reflected in the Athshean language, which uses the same expression “Athshe” for both concepts, highlighting the interrelatedness and conformity between the two. By linking the microcosm of the forest to the overall ecosystem of the world in this way, the concept of the forest as metonymies for the entire environment becomes apparent. The health of the forest—or destruction of it as in the cases of the wasteland areas on Athshe and the example of Earth—reflects the state of the whole world and its inhabitants: What happens to the one will also affect the other. Le Guin’s narrative, published almost half a century ago, reflects on the value of the forest and the ecological crisis through exploitation of nature, as well as a lack of respect for the rights of Indigenous cultures. Reflecting on the time, especially on the Vietnam War, Le Guin states in her introduction that: it was becoming clear that the ethic which approved the defoliation of forests and grainlands and the murder of non-combatants in the name of “peace” was only a corollary of the ethic which permits the despoliation of natural resources for private profit or the GNP, and the murder of creatures of the Earth in the name of “man.” The victory of the ethic of exploitation, in all societies, seemed as inevitable as it was disastrous.24

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More than fifty years later, not much has changed. Problems of deforestation and the exploitation of nature have increased over the last few decades with, for example, the dwindling of the once dense and widespread ancient forests in almost all parts of the world for the sake of human progress. In Le Guin’s novella, the Athshean Selver and the Terran Lyubov function as mediators between a healthy forest and the colonising Terrans in order to protect the delicate environment and safeguard the therapeutic sylvan agency. The forest is a therapeutic agent, a place with positive psychological and physical effects on the individual, and realised in the Athsheans’ ability to control their dreams consciously. Simultaneously, madness is intricately connected to the absence of trees in The Word for World Is Forest. When Athsheans go mad, they are taken to the desert to wander alone away from the forest. Consequently, the loss and destruction of the forest that is experienced throughout the narrative has a deep effect on the Indigenous people who begin to change their formerly peaceful behaviour in order to retaliate the destruction of the forest. In the end, the Athsheans violently revolt against the Terrans, ending their logging exploits on Athshe. Le Guin thus “has been able to define nature as an essence which is both physical and mental, a vital element, not only in the American experience, but in the consciousness of all humankind”.25 Reflecting on the interconnectedness of the forest and linking it to the mental state of the individual, Le Guin’s work, set against the upcoming environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, shifts the reader’s perspective towards nature and highlights the significance of the forest as an emblem for nature as such in a world dominated by profit and war. With the help of fictional mediators such as Selver and Lyubov facilitating interaction between the environment and the human characters within the narrative, the shift towards an ecocentric perspective and ecological thought, as well as an understanding of the intricate global network of the forest is established. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship of the Ring is another significant mediating character whose clarifications help the hobbits, and thus in extension the reader, to understand the forest’s position within a human-dominated world. When stepping into the Old Forest, the four hobbits enter a dark and dangerous realm in which they encounter their first real antagonist, Old Man Willow. The hobbits’ increasing feeling of uneasiness within the forest culminates in their assault by Old Man Willow. After almost being strangled and buried alive by the willow, the hobbits naturally develop a feeling of animosity against the trees and the Old Forest. However, through the words of Bombadil safe in his house, the hobbits start “to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed, to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things [are] at home”.26 Bombadil functions as a neutral educator for the hobbits by providing rational motives for the forest’s malevolent disposition against humanoid characters. He clarifies for

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the hobbits “the heart of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers”.27 This exact statement is spoken by Treebeard in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Two Towers (2002). By excluding the character of Tom Bombadil from the theatrical adaptation, Jackson assigned Bombadil’s speech and position towards nature to the character of Treebeard. Although simply due to character reduction, the idea that Treebeard provides the hobbits, and the audience, with an explanation of the forests’ aversion towards anything able to move is a powerful image. Treebeard’s anger is visible in his facial expression and his voice when speaking about the destruction of the forest: “They come with fire. They come with axes. Gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. Curse them!”28 His deep and earthly voice comes more rapid and louder, showing an outburst of painful emotions and long-suffering by the hands of humankind. Thus, in the theatrical adaptation, voiced and mediated nature are combined in the arboreal character Treebeard, which intensifies the ecocritical voice of nature. In Tolkien’s novel, the anthropomorphised hatred of the forest is vividly illuminated by the humans’ exploitation of the forest, as “destroyers,” and their domination of nature as “usurpers.” Bombadil is positioned between the two parties (forest/nature and humankind) helping the characters to understand the forest. The significance of Bombadil as a comment was stated by Tolkien himself, declaring that Bombadil “represents something that [he] feel[s] important”.29 Although referring to the concept of renouncing the idea of power and control, Bombadil is vital in conveying Tolkien’s ecocritical message. Bombadil is a valuable character, commenting on the maltreatment of the forest within the world of Middle-earth, as well as extending this point of view to the world of the reader. He serves, therefore, as a lens through which an eco-sylvan awareness can be developed in the characters and the reader. As examined, the individual human characters living in close connection and harmony with the forest become mediators between nature and the other characters and thus educate them, and in extension their audience, in the importance of a healthy environment and a balanced relationship with nature. On the one hand, the mediators highlight the intricate network and interconnectivity of the forest and every living thing, creature and plant, and so establish an ecological thought and the forest as a vital component of the environment. Through their lectures, the idea and significance of the forest ecology is explained and made understandable to outsiders. Furthermore, they acknowledge nature as more than just a commodity to be exploited by humans and, thus, elevate nature above human concern and needs. By repeatedly holding up a mirror to the characters about their own, often ignorant,

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actions against the forest (see Jake or the hobbits for instance) and/or the maltreatment of other characters within the narrative (for example the Terrans on Athshe), the mediators reveal the consequences of the negative treatment of nature and shift the focus to an eco-sylvan and ecocentric perspective. Consequently, as nature itself does not always possess a distinctive and individual voice, characters such as Selver, Neytiri and so forth adopt the part of representative in order to speak for the forest ecology and nature overall. A Sylvan Nature Silenced The analysed narratives have presented us with an animistic nature, a nature that is alive with its own consciousness and voice. This empowering motive allows the forest and its trees to become distinctive characters and an overall voice for nature. The destruction of these forests, either discussed as an overt and prominent theme within the narrative or as a by-product, signals therefore an anthropocentric silencing of nature as examined by Manes. Nature’s animism and the forest’s value is in these cases utterly disregarded for different reasons and thus nature’s voice is being stifled. The silencing of nature is most effectively portrayed in the destruction of individual trees. By felling individual trees, their voices are cut off literally as well as metaphorically. The deforestation of Lantern Waste in Lewis’s The Last Battle is introduced through one of the most severe and devastating scenes of a nature silenced. A dryad of a beech tree desperately seeks help against the felling of the talking trees, calling out: “Woe for my brothers and sisters! Woe for the holy trees! The woods are laid waste. The axe is loosed against us. We are being felled. Great trees are falling, falling, falling”.30 Coming upon King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, she pleads with him to protect the forest and bring justice to his people. This highly emotional scene emphasises nature’s animism and lets the reader connect to the fate of the trees more intimately. Simultaneously, the urgency she conveys in her great distress highlights and exacerbates the grave injustice done to the forest. Nevertheless, it is her violent death, which is caused by the felling of her tree far away, which reveals the most shocking experience of the forest’s maltreatment. Amidst the King’s outcry, the reader witnesses the Dryad’s final moments: “A-a-a-h,” gasped the Dryad, shuddering as if in pain—shuddering time after time as if under repeated blows. Then all at once she fell sideways as suddenly as if both her feet had been cut from under her. For a second they saw her lying dead on the grass and then she vanished. They knew what had happened. Her tree, miles away, had been cut down.31

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The tree is violently silenced and her final words speak of pain and suffering, generating deep and genuine compassion with the plight of the forest. By vanishing completely, the dryad’s death highlights the loss of enchanted nature through the irrevocable damage done to the environment and displays a silenced nature by the hands of humankind. Not for the first time in Narnian history are the sentient trees being silenced. Towards the beginning of Prince Caspian (1951), Caspian and the Pevensies are confronted with an anthropocentric world where the numinous characters live in hiding and the spirits of the trees and water are in deep sleep. As the consequence of a steady disenchantment and subjugation of nature, nature is temporarily stripped of her voice and agency. Nevertheless, the violent death and silencing of the talking trees towards the end of Narnian history displays a despicable act, one that arouses strong empathy with the forest and increasing resentment against extreme deforestation and the overall maltreatment of nature. The silence of nature through deforestation is also a highly emotional and agonising concept discussed in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Treebeard’s lament speaks on the one hand of Ents that revert to becoming trees on their own accord in a world where the Elves and the numinous dwindles and the era of men is approaching. However, the main reason for the trees’ silence is the wanton destruction by Saruman and his Orcs. Treebeard mourns his arboreal friends, and Bregalad, a younger Ent, likewise condemns the Orcs’ mischief against the trees and gives a sombre report full of grief where he “came and called them by their long names, but they did not quiver, they did not hear or answer: they lay dead”.32 This mournful description of the waning of an animistic world highlights the loss of the numinous through the loss of voice. The most striking moment of a silenced nature in Middle-earth, however, is displayed in Jackson’s extended edition of The Two Towers. Although Treebeard and Bregalad explicitly grieve over the loss of voices in Tolkien’s book and so establish an emotional connection between the reader and the trees, the visual portrayal of a devastated landscape effects the audience on a different level. In the film, the audience, together with Treebeard and the two hobbits, step out of a healthy green forest into a muddy wasteland of stumps. The cinematography of this scene instantaneously captures the audience’s emotions and portrays nature’s silence more than effectively. While Treebeard steps out of the forest, the audience is presented with a reaction shot focussing on Treebeard talking about the daily trifles of being a tree (squirrels climbing his back and tickling him). In this way, the audience does not register the deforested area immediately but can only observe Treebeard’s reaction to what he is seeing. In this moment, the silence of nature becomes omnipresent: Treebeard inhales sharply and is speechless, thus, silence is depicted on a diegetic level. Simultaneously on the non-diegetic level, the score fades out and so generates an uncanny moment of utter stillness while

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the camera panning shows the destruction of the forest in a point-of-view shot. This eeriness of utter silence, there is no bird, wind, speech or underlying score, creates a highly emotional response in the audience. Jackson’s adapted Treebeard delivers in this soundless moment the same emotional speech as Tolkien’s Treebeard: “Many of these trees were my friends. Creatures I’ve known from nut and acorn. . . . They had voices of their own.—Saruman—A wizard should know better”.33 Only after uttering Saruman’s name and connecting him to the deforestation does the sound and music come back. Treebeard’s anger is aroused and with a deafening cry that echoes across the forest, he calls upon the Ents to march to war. In the theatrical adaptation, the last march of the Ents is more of a spontaneous reaction in contrast to the meticulous decision-making in Tolkien’s Entmoot. However, this short scene successfully links the various concepts discussed in this main chapter: The silencing of nature through maltreatment, the establishment of the arboreal Treebeard and Ents as voices for nature, as well as the forest as an active agent going to war against human’s maltreatment of the environment. As could be seen in the previous example, the theme of a silenced nature not only manifests itself in the concrete silence of individual tree characters, such as the dryad and Treebeard, but also expands to the entire environment in the form of a lifeless landscape. This form of silencing nature, the destruction of the forests due to excessive deforestation and human maltreatment, exacerbates the feeling of loss and anxiety for an endangered environment, a theme permeating through this entire study. Time after time, the devastated forest areas are sharply contrasted to a healthy ecosystem full of life, making their encounter even more shocking. The, often, abrupt change from a lush forest to a deforested area is deemed destructive and regularly compared to graveyards, battlefields or wastelands; thus places of eerie stillness. Tolkien presents such a wasteland in the highly industrialised valley of Isengard in The Two Towers. Tolkien’s aversion to the maltreatment of nature and unwarranted industrialisation is explicit and stimulates the reader to reflect on the devastating geographical changes taking place in the era of the Capitalocene. The turning of a once green and prosperous valley covered with trees into a “graveyard of unquiet dead”34 depicts an unnatural man-made industrial landscape and pinpoints to the decay of nature with “burned and axe-hewn stumps of ancient groves”35 along the path. Isengard is turned into a place where one would hear no sounds of nature, no birds’ chirping or the rustling of the wind in the trees; one can hear only industrious and fabricated sounds. Shocking images of deforestation highlight the conquest of the forest and the anthropocentric silencing of nature. In Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the characters come across “a hideous lane like a raw gash in the land, full of muddy ruts where felled trees had been dragged down to the river”.36 In Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, the significance of the forest as an ancient living

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organism that has been brutally violated is furthermore discussed, where groups of humans venture into the Elven forest Du Weldenvarden to cut down ancient trees for their war engines. In all of these examples, the characters of the speculative worlds know that humans need the forests’ resources for various reasons; yet, the extreme logging of the forest for excessive industrialisation and war machineries without any regards to the wider environment is criticised in these narratives. Here, the violent destruction and silencing of nature is intensified by its connection to further devastation through war and thus the feeling of loss and sorrow is amplified and stretched beyond the realm of the forest, linking it to the wider world again. On a similar note, the negative impact of extreme deforestation for the environment is discussed in Shaw’s novel The Trees. After the entire world has been afforested overnight, various groups make their living within a primal forest space; though, most of them struggle. The largest settlement the main protagonists discover shows humans’ incapability to learn from previous mistakes as they disregard an ecological thought and the idea of living in harmony with the environment. A large group of people come together to log an entire valley in order to build a rudimentary village. The village represents the modern model of massive urbanisation and intensive farming, where the muddy place stands in clear contrast to the previous lush and green forest. The idea of a settlement where people can safely live together and start new should be a welcoming sight. However, the reader is presented with a negative image of nature being violated and silenced. The settlers turned the “whole valley into a wasteland”37 with only dull colours present revealing the “lifelessness of such a place as this”.38 With stumps of felled trees, Shaw evokes the notion of a battlefield, where the “countless stumps lay forgotten and taken for dead”.39 The corruption of nature into an inhospitable environment is accompanied by a subtle corruption of the individual’s and the community’s moral code, as the villagers are led by unscrupulous men who do not back away from violence and suppression. As a contrast, a healthy forest, and therefore healthy nature, seems to be an indicator of a positive interconnection between all life forms. Shaw establishes an emotional link to a nourishing forest by providing a disturbing picture of a violated and silenced nature. The violation of nature is furthermore deployed in Barron’s novel The Ancient One where a comparison of a deforested area to wastelands and battlefields underlines humanity’s arrogance towards nature and signals the forest’s predominantly cultural position as a simple commodity while negating its animism. The same imagery is presented in Cameron’s Avatar, where Jake wanders through the burned and devastated forest landscape after the attack on the Home Tree. In Barron’s novel, Kate suddenly stumbles into a felled forest area. Kate’s haunting description comes as a complete contrast to

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the wholesome forest described previously, shocking her and the reader alike. The particular scenery is compared to: old photographs of trenched battlefields in World War One. An entire section of the forest, a square about a mile on each side, had literally vanished. Nothing remained but a wasteland of torn limbs, uprooted trunks, slashed bark, and mangled branches strewn across the pockmarked terrain.40

By comparing the clearing to old photographs of the trenches in World War One, a time of extensive devastation, Barron heightens the horror of ruin and desolation after a catastrophic event. In this context, the torn limbs describe the trees’ branches scattered around the terrain as well as referring, metaphorically, to the actual limbs of fallen soldiers during the war—an image that has also been implemented in Le Guin’s novella. Additionally, Barron’s graphical description of the wasteland using violent adjectives (torn, uprooted, slashed, mangled and pockmarked) triggers a feeling of despair. The revulsion of the deforested area and the loss of life is furthermore expressed in the eerie stillness that lies before them. The once rich forest is now a lifeless area: “No birds sang, no animals stirred, no branches clicked and swished in the breeze. If this had once been a forest, it was no longer. The land lay naked and exposed to the cold mists of morning”.41 Consequently, this emotional and horrific imagery of a silenced nature, a forest destroyed, is potent in conveying Barron’s ecocritical message of conservation. The devastating images heighten the necessity for protecting the forest and presents the destroyed balance between the forest, nature and life as such. In conclusion, it has become clear that the silencing of nature through the destruction of the forest is depicted as a highly emotional and devastating moment within the various narratives. Whereas the tree’s ability to communicate directly with other characters asserts their central position for the environment and highlights nature’s position of agency, as I have discussed in the beginning, the silencing of nature reveals the derogatory anthropocentricism. The silence of nature is here effectively portrayed through extreme deforestation and the reduction of a once green and flourishing forest to muddy wastelands, compared to battlefields and graveyards. This abrupt and extreme contrast to a healthy forest, where birds sing and trees whisper, evokes an intense notion of empathy in the characters and the reader alike. The tremendous loss of life that effects flora and fauna together with the eerie stillness of the devastated forest arouses anxiety and deep sorrow. Confronted with this silence all around, the characters themselves pause for a moment, not able to speak themselves (see for example King Tirian and Kate). As a result, the silencing of nature itself becomes something unspeakable; a deed so vile that

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we have to bow our heads and walk on in silence. Overall, the authors analysed here establish the forest as a voice for nature and a vital microcosm for the entire environment and are so able to address environmental issues within the Anthropocene and encourage a shift in perspective and the validation of the forest’s animism and its vital position for the environment as something more than a simple resource. THE FOREST AND TREES AS SYLVAN AND ARBOREAL AGENTS FOR NATURE The Arboreal Non-Human Agent I have been discussing the sylvan and arboreal agency so far, however, speculative fiction often introduces non-human characters or more-than-human worlds that take part in the overall narrative, such as walking and talking arboreal characters. As those arboreal characters transcendent the classical depiction of trees, their particular agency has to be expanded to include the concept of non-human agency. Consequently, before I can analyse the sentient arboreal characters of speculative fiction, I will consider the specific case of an arboreal non-human agent. Overall, the concept of agency has been applied to non-human individuals only recently, as the concept is intrinsically attributed to humans alone. Although there appears to be a common understanding of what agency means and is (namely, the overall ability to decide and act consciously and deliberately), the term itself and its debate is elusive at best. Agency is linked to concepts such as free will and rational choices and is defined as an inherently anthropocentric condition that displays a form of reaction and/or resistance towards a particular system or general circumstances, as well as it is mainly mediated by relational conditions. Whether agency is performed out of instinct and governed by prevalent conditions or out of an unconditional free choice, some form of intention is always central to agency, which leads to the question of the agent: What/ who is an agent, and what are their fundamental properties? Establishing a framework and classification for an agent is not only essential in social sciences, yet also vital in the debate of non-human agency. Albert Bandura identifies an agent as a person who can “influence intentionally one’s functioning and life circumstances”.42 Furthermore, he lists four fundamental properties of human agency in social cognitive theory, crucial for the present study of sylvan and arboreal agency as well. First, intentionality plays an essential role for agency. An agent forms intentions and acts according to them. Here, Bandura also recognises the limitation of this argument as an agent seldom exists in an isolated environment and thus actions often

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involve further participants. An individual agent consequently has to coordinate their intentions and actions with others and work towards a “collective intentionality”.43 As a second core property, Bandura identifies the concept of forethought, which embeds momentary intentions to a temporal cognition. The third property is self-reactiveness: not only does the theoretical ability to perform conscious actions formulate an agent, but also active and conscious performances of their intended actions. Bandura’s final property of agency is self-reflectiveness, which highlights the agent’s self-awareness and their individual reflections on their actions and thoughts on a metacognitive level. Those four properties—intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness—of human agency effectively summarise the concept of human agency and classify what constitutes an agent. As I have outlined in the introduction and previous chapter, the problem of an anthropocentric worldview and the strict definition of agency as a fundamentally human concept has been addressed in the emergence of a material agency. The long-standing justification of considering agency as an inherently human concept derives from a prevalent anthropocentric worldview illustrated in the hierarchical structure of the Great Chain of Being. Humans have long been positioned at the centre and above all other life forms, with a strong focus on subjectivity, reason and language as uniquely human attributes. In contrast, animals as non-humans have been denied those attributes to various degrees. In particular, their actions have long been considered primarily unconscious reactions to different stimuli. René Descartes famously regarded animals as bȇte machine, as machines or automatons, and thus denies animals a form of intelligence and reason. He links the machinelike behaviour of animals to the idea that animals do not exhibit emotions as humans do and claims that expressions of pain are merely uncontrolled reactions to their body.44 In this regard, Descartes rejects any form of intentionality in the animals’ actions, which is so fundamental for the concept of agency. This notion of unconscious deeds as well as negations of the animal’s selfhood and forethought has long been severely challenged on various accounts, especially within the animal rights movements and animal studies. Once again, a shift away from a solely anthropocentric perspective is central and helps to establish an all-encompassing ecocentric worldview that provides animals with their own agency and intrinsic value. Nevertheless, the central question remains: What is non-human agency or, more precisely, how can agency be recognised in (arboreal) non-humans? Helen Steward discusses this question in her article “Animal Agency” (2009) and comes up with a working classification of an animal agent: i.  an agent can move the whole, or at least some parts, of something we are inclined to think of as its body;

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ii.  an agent is a centre of some form of subjectivity; iii.  an agent is something to which at least some rudimentary types of intentional state (e.g. trying, wanting, perceiving) may be properly attributed iv.  An agent is a settler of matters concerning certain of the movements of its own body i.e., the actions by means of which those movements are effected are considered to be non-necessitated events, attributed always first and foremost as agent, and only secondarily to environmental impacts or triggers of any sort.45 This represents a more inclusive approach towards the concept of agency as it broadens the necessary properties of an agent and recognises the impediment provided by the communication/language barrier between human and animal by, unfortunately, highlighting the anthropocentric perspective. Steward incorporates the unresolved issue of anthropomorphism in her concept, which has concerned scholars of animal studies from its beginnings. Due to a lack of human speech, humans have, right or wrong, interpreted animal’s behaviour and ascribed certain meanings to them. In that way, animal narratives and animal history seem to be always represented through human’s perception of animals. Even so, Steward’s conceptualisation provides a valuable structure for an animal agent as it centres on the perceptible actions of the animal body, which can be applied to other non-humans as well. In order to establish a working framework to classify the analysed fictional forests and trees as organic non-human agents, I have brought together Bandura’s core properties of human agency and Steward’s concept of animal agency. Consequently, I use the following aspects to define and classify the agency of the organic non-human characters: 1.  Subjectivity: The non-human agent exhibits a form of self-reflectiveness, which additionally positions them within their particular environment. 2.  (Self-)Reactiveness: The non-human agent is able to move their body, or parts of their body, independently. 3.  Intentionality: We can ascribe a certain idea of conscious movements and actions to the non-human agent, that is, they can move their body, or parts of their body, with purpose. 4.  Forethought: The non-human agent exhibits a form of consciousness, which allows them to consider proper actions for an anticipated outcome. Nature Reclaiming Space The image of nature recovering space is a prominent motive in many fictional worlds of literature and film, as well as in our primary world, as exhibited in photography such as the collection Naturalia: Reclaimed by Nature (2018)

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by photographer Jonathan Jimenez. Jimenez photographed various deserted man-made constructions, such as hotels and scenes from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to show how nature, in many cases in the form of a forest, is reclaiming those abandoned places through their routine and transformative agency. The idea of a lost civilisation with its remnants being overgrown by nature is a prominent theme in literature, and especially in speculative fiction, such as in Lewis’s Prince Caspian. During their second journey to Narnia, the four Pevensie siblings stumble upon the abandoned ruins of Cair Paraval, the seat of the high kings and queens of Narnia, which has been reconquered by nature in form of a wild orchard. They make their way through a dense forest to arrive in the previous orderly “orchard—long, long ago, before the place went wild and the wood grew up”46, now surrounded by collapsed walls. The formerly stronghold and castle of a high civilisation has crumbled down to ruins and the forest has altered the scenery. Although confronted with a melancholic and nostalgic memory of the lost civilisation, especially as their reign is always depicted as a glorious and prosperous time, the scene also reveals the strength and endurance of nature. Still described in an aesthetically pleasing tone, the transformative sylvan agency is shown and the concept of nature taking over the deserted place of humanity and repopulating it with a wilderness that once was is highlighted. Postapocalyptic scenarios, predominantly in the science fiction genre, deal with the concept of shattered or disappearing civilisations and, especially in the Capitalocene, with the negative consequences of climate and environmental change. Whereas some apocalyptic narratives imagine the death of nature and the environment due to primarily humanity’s negative impact (such as Philip K. Dick’s Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? [1968] or Benjamin Legrand’s graphic novel series Snowpiercer [original Le Transperceneige, 1982–2000]), others contrastingly use the trope of a diminished and vanishing civilisation to highlight the restorative effects of an uncultivated nature, a nature left alone and able to regulate herself. Several novels and films, such as George Stewart’s novel Earth Abides (1949), Ling Ma’s novel Severance (2018), and even Marvel’s film Avengers: Endgame (2019), but also Alan Weisman’s nonfiction The World without Us (2007), explore the positive ramifications for the environment if humanity’s population is drastically reduced and nature is able to return. This beautiful aesthetic of a healthy wilderness, of nature flourishing and reclaiming man-made places, is clearly set in contrast to the predominant dead world after an entirely destructive apocalypse. This reimagination of a “beautiful apocalypse”47 emphasises the significance of nature in a different way, displaying a picturesque landscape in contrast to mourning the loss of nature; however, always at the cost of an entire civilisation.

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One of the earliest examples of a postapocalyptic fiction that aids the re-emergence of a healthy environment is Richard Jefferies’s influential novel After London or, Wild England (1885), which establishes the theme of nature reclaiming the countryside after a non-specific catastrophe and illness diminished England’s population and left the fields unattended. The novel is divided into two parts: Whereas the first five chapters discuss the “Relapse into Barbarism” (Part I) and introduces the reader to the setting and society of primitive times following a Darwinian evolutionary theory, the second part (“Wild England”) reads as an adventure story set within this wilderness and examines the corruption of its society. The novel’s outset, titled “The Great Forest,” presents a vivid time lapse of an afforestation period highlighting the potency and force of nature in its transformative agency when left alone. In a short time, the pastoral English countryside is transformed into an extensive virgin forest. Describing the different steps of the overgrowing and de-civilising course throughout the years, the narrative eventually arrives at a time (thirty years later) where the entire countryside is covered by forests and marshes. The sylvan agency through its routine and transformative actions is evident. The Great Forest reforesting England strikingly illustrates nature’s endurance and force as well as signalling the centrality of the forest and establishing it as the most natural habitat and ecosystem in those regions of the Western world. While the previous examples of the agential realism of great forests and wilderness speak of a sylvan agency within material ecocriticism, a more active and to some extent conscious reconquering of space can be found in examples of speculative fictions where forests spontaneously reclaim their ancient space; whether on their own accord or summoned by someone or something else. In these cases, the forest becomes the sylvan non-human Other and exhibits a non-human agency. In the Doctor Who episode “In the Forest of the Night,” the Doctor arrives at Trafalgar Square only to find London suddenly reforested. Overnight, a virgin forest sprang out of the earth to cover the whole world under its dense canopy. The transformative agency of the natural forest is here accelerated so that it does not represent a natural process of growth anymore. Although the characters are presented with the threat of the forest, getting lost and encountering predators (escaped wolves and lions from the London Zoo) within this apparently apocalyptic event, the forest is also depicted as a picturesque wilderness full of enchantment. In this way, the scenery is closer to the idea of the beautiful apocalypse than a perished world and the danger is primarily revealed in the anxiety of the characters; thus, focusing in these instances on the psychological hostile sylvan agency. However, during the course of the episode, the real reason of the forest’s growth is uncovered: The trees have grown in order to protect Earth from an extra-terrestrial threat, from a solar flare. Through its

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natural photosynthesis, the forest is creating an oxygen shield around Earth to protect it from any extra-terrestrial impact. The significance of the forest for the fictional Doctor Who universe is elucidated here and we can easily extract an environmental message for our primary world as well. Once the forest’s protective intentions are clear, the Doctor launches the new “Class project: Save the Earth”48, as the government is still trying to take control over the forest. The motto of the day is to trust in nature and let it run its course. The final moments of the episode clearly presents the viewer with an overt environmental message of the forest’s value as a therapeutic and beneficial landscape, specifically as a significant producer of clean oxygen, and human’s generalised indifference towards the environment. The appearance of the forest overnight as a protective shield for Earth signals a (therapeutic) agency and intent. The question is here whether the forest or trees themselves actively contribute to the start of the reforestation. The forest in the Doctor Who episode eventually does not display an individual sylvan non-human agency, but is apparently mobilised by mysterious spirits, tiny golden orbs floating in the air only made visible through a gravity field created by the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. The spirits communicate through Maebh Arden, claiming responsibility for the forest. Nevertheless, the therapeutic effect of the healthy forest is evident and the animism of nature is presented through these spirits. They “are the green shoots that grow between the cracks, the grass that grows over the mass graves. After your wars are over, [they] will still be here. [They] are the life that prevails”.49 Once more, the endurance and permanency of nature is highlighted; humanity is just a tiny speck in the evolutionary history of Earth, yet, it has damaged the environment significantly. The forest in “In the Forest of the Night” disappears again after it shields Earth from the solar flare and the incident is forgotten, consequently, the environmental message is ultimately not memorised by the overall characters, yet, (hopefully) absorbed by the audience. A similar environmental message, where a virgin forest exhibits transformative agency and reforests the world as a response to the prevailing climate crisis, is investigated in Shaw’s novel The Trees. Similar to the Doctor Who episode, the forest in Shaw’s narrative appears overnight in one swift growth and does not show a distinct sign of non-human agency afterwards. Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that the forest is nature’s resolution after “it had been silent for a long, long time”50, as stated by the whisperers, supernatural wooden characters that reemerged with the virgin forest. Although not entirely identifying as sylvan non-human agency, Shaw uses his forest as a means to halt or even revert the disastrous effects of climate change and so its transformative and interrelational agency becomes a driving force and the forest an organic agent against the maltreatment of nature.

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In his opening chapter, Shaw depicts an apocalyptic world where the forest violently reclaims its ancient space. It is not a subtle and natural development, but a destructive and vigorous outburst of nature and an augmented transformation and so depicts a more classical, destroyed, postapocalyptic world. As an entire ecosystem, the forest becomes a force and sylvan agent to be reckoned with, destroying everything in its way. The reader is presented with a ferocious and deafening chaos with “shattering bricks and exploding glass” which sounds “like a thousand trains derailing at once”51, due to the rapid growth of trees. The suddenness of the outburst and Shaw’s use of pressing language creates a sense of urgency and dire need for nature to change the face of the world. The use of words such as “squealings and jarrings and bucklings” as well as the repetition of the adverb “up” to be followed by “and then, at a great height, stopped”52 signal the similar unexpected end of the violent act. This abrupt and forceful eruption of a forest indicates nature’s seemingly loss of patience and sets the advancements of humanity back to primitive times to provide an answer to their maltreatment of nature. In contrast to the slow but steady natural advancements of nature, Shaw portrays the reconquest as one single episode, one single transformative action, and an extreme time laps of trees growing in just this one night (in Doctor Who, the viewer is only presented with the outcome and not with the actual growth of the forest). Following this, Shaw primarily focusses on the aftermath of the forest’s invasion and the humans’ struggle to comprehend their new living situation. During their travels through the virgin forest, Shaw’s main protagonists come across further devastation and destruction of cornerstones of modern civilisation. The communication systems have been brought to standstill without any electricity, roads have been ruined and made impassable, and houses have been demolished so that there are no longer comfortable and safe places for humans to take shelter in. The primal forest in The Trees does not display a reflexive agency due to individual characters’ maltreatments but nature’s ultimate reply after “she sent us more warnings than anyone could count”.53 Shaw overtly links his narrative to the issues of the Capitalocene, where problems of global warming, deforestation and messages of nature, such as the expansion of the hole in the ozone, massive extinction and higher frequencies of great floods and wildfires, are being discussed but only gradually affectively countered on a global scale. In Shaw’s narrative, the forest has one enormous outburst of reflexive and transformative agency, even though initiated by a second agent (the whisperers), in order to change the course of time and to give nature some peace and time to recover.

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Sylvan (Re-)Action Against Intrusion In contrast to Shaw’s forest and the forest in Doctor Who, enchanted forests within the realms of speculative fiction often represent a collective entity with their own sylvan non-human agency as well as accommodating individual sentient proactive trees as direct agents. In many cases, forests of secondary worlds are judged dangerous especially because of those arboreal non-human characters, acting as obstacles and antagonists for those who enter the forest without respect. In L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (1900) for example, Dorothy and her companions arrive at an enchanted forest on their final journey to bring Dorothy back home to Kansas. The enchanted forest in Quadling Country south of the Emerald City, with the aptly name of “The Forest of the Fighting Trees,” is guarded by a line of hostile trees who try to hinder everyone who wishes to enter the forest. The Scarecrow is the first to arrive at its border and is violently thrown back by the branches of the trees. It is however only the first row of trees that have the ability to move and fight off any intruder, which makes them “policemen of the forest”.54 The forest, or line of trees as in Oz, as a protective border is furthermore employed in Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004). In the narrative past, four magical woods surrounding Newcastle, the capital city of the Raven King’s northern kingdom, defend and protect the city and its people from all harm. The trees and the woods are said to be able to move around and, “upon occasion, to swallow up people who approached the city intending harm to the inhabitants”.55 In Naomi Novik’s acclaimed novel Uprooted (2015), the small village Dvernik lies at the borders of a dangerous magical forest in which primeval creatures roam freely attacking the villages and killing everyone who might venture into the forest. Yet, the forest and its trees are dangerous as well as they entomb people and feed off their flesh. Kasia, one of the young women of the village, has been captured by a creature from the woods, and the main protagonist Agniezska ultimately finds her “swallowed into the trunk whole, all of her made a part of the tree, of the Wood”.56 The wood is steadily growing, attacking and swallowing cities along its way. As can be seen, the enchantment of the forests provide them with an individual collective consciousness that has them working together against intrusion from outside the forest realms. The forest’s ability to hinder anyone from entering or attacking them along their paths is used as a widespread concept of a sentient forest, one that is also evident in Tolkien’s Old Forest in The Fellowship of the Ring. After leaving their familiar environment of the Shire behind, the

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four hobbits feel threatened by the dark and ominous Old Forest, which is “consciously menacing, consciously ill-intentioned toward those humans who invade it”.57 Stories of the forest’s mischievousness circulate amongst the hobbits living close to its borders speaking of trees that “may drop a branch, or stick a root out, or grasp at you with a long trailer”.58 In addition, the trees of the forest appear to move around to conceal the travellers’ path. What is more, the forest is said to have attacked the hedges, which shut out the wilderness from the pastoral Shire, by planting themselves right next to it and leaning over it. With the Old Forest, the reader is presented with the idea of wild but sentient nature creeping in into cultivated landscapes trying to reclaim space for the first time in The Lord of the Rings. Although these events appear to be more natural (tripping over roots or being caught in the branches of trees or bushes is common while walking through a dense forest), the numinous in Tolkien’s narrative and later Bombadil’s clarification establishes these as the forest’s active and conscious choices and thus give non-human agency to the Old Forest. The forest’s antagonistic behaviour is explained by Bombadil. Because of the hobbit’s counter-attack and Bombadil’s mediation, the shift from an anthropocentric perspective to an environmental and eco-sylvan perspective is established and the forest’s reaction and animosity is explained. A similar notion of hostility towards human intrusion is depicted in Le Guin’s short story “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” where the aggression of the forest is expressed through a psychological hostile agency alone. Here, hostility is triggered through the arrival of the surveyor team who appear “to a forest . . . as forest fires. Hurricanes, Dangers. What moves quickly is dangerous, to a plant. The rootless would be alien, terrible”.59 In both cases, the forest is transformed into a sentient place with a collective consciousness and agency that shows hostility towards unwanted intrusion and danger. (Re-)Action of Rooted Sentient Proactive Trees So far, I have looked at sylvan agency, whether through a natural growth as in Jefferies’s or Lewis’s narratives, initiated by a second party in Shaw’s novel and Doctor Who, or through a precise action, such as the Old Forest’s behaviour towards the hobbits. In these cases, it has become clear that the forest is a sylvan agent for nature and reacts, at times aggressively, against intruders or against the overall maltreatment of nature. Far more distinct and remarkable is the agency attributed to individual trees, the arboreal non-human agency of sentient proactive trees in speculative fiction. Within the sentient Old Forest, the hobbits encounter their first antagonist in the Old Man Willow. The ancient tree’s apparent actions are initially simply anthropomorphised through the hobbits’ perception. The hobbits’ sleepy

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observation of the tree provides the reader with an increasing sense of a character before them. Similar to the overall behaviour of the Old Forest, these actions combine natural behaviours of trees and ostensible anthropomorphic attributes and the willow is therefore not yet distinctively recognised as an individual character and agent with conscious decisions. However, after lulling them to sleep, the willow pushes Frodo into the water and traps Merry and Pippin under its roots. These acts against the hobbits move “the tree away from the pathetic fallacy and towards faërian drama, from qualities projected onto the tree to its own full awareness and intent”.60 Furthermore, Bombadil’s identification of the tree as Old Man Willow establishes the willow tree as a character in its own rights. Later on, Bombadil’s explanation provides the verification of the tree’s personality. The tree’s arboreal non-human agency is shown through his ability to move parts of his body. What is more, he exhibits a form of subjectivity as indicated by Bombadil and an intentionality, namely to harm those that walk on two legs. Because of this deep hatred, Old Man Willow is identified as the most dangerous tree in the Old Forest. Once again, the immense strength of nature is emphasised and, in this case particularly, identified as a positive force too. Even though Old Man Willow might not overtly represent an agent for nature at large, his overall connection to the forest and his green strength ties him neatly to the Old Forest and with Bombadil’s mediation, his actions are revealed as a negative result of the deforestation of the Old Forest. Although the trigger and thus (re-)action of the individual rooted sentient trees might vary, within their overall intentions a common theme can be detected: The reaction and protection against some form of intrusion by human characters. As mentioned above, Old Man Willow attacks the hobbits, and probably everyone that comes along his way, out of a longstanding grudge against any form of intrusion or violence towards the Old Forest. A clear and observable agency can furthermore be found in Paolini’s Menoa tree as well as Pocahontas’ Grandmother Willow. Both trees are sentient arboreal characters and, although firmly rooted to the ground, show a distinct form of intentional mobility. The Menoa tree, when threatened by Saphira, launches a major counter-attack by trapping and immobilising Saphira and Eragon with her thick roots. Her enraged conscience and subsequent actions furthermore causes the encircling trees to seem larger and more menacing to Eragon and only after the situation is resolved do the trees relax and fall back into their natural position. Trapping someone underneath a root is a common arboreal strategy to deal with an intruder (see Old Man Willow) as well as lifting a root so that trespassers trip over it: both actions can be classified as natural occurrences in a forest, however, when deployed consciously by the tree character they reveal an arboreal

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non-human agency. Pocahontas’ Grandmother Willow exactly does this by lifting her roots to trip the two English settlers coming into her forest to search for John Smith and finally chases them away with one wellplaced slap of her branches. The chiefly docile willow shows the strength of nature. Grandmother Willow and the Menoa tree reveal a clear form of agency, as they both are able to move parts of their body deliberately, specifically roots and branches, and thus display a clear intentionality in their actions. Furthermore, both characters possess a clear form of subjectivity and conscience that allows them to communicate and physically interact with the other characters and their environment. Whereas Old Man Willow, the Menoa tree and Grandmother Willow display clear signs of arboreal non-human agency, the case of the Whomping Willow in Rowling’s Harry Potter novels raises the issue of transition from a merely reacting tree to a sentient arboreal agent. Initially, the tree was planted on the grounds of Hogwarts to disguise and guard a secret tunnel leading from the grounds to the Shrieking Shak in which the young werewolf Remus Lupin could hide away during his monthly transformation. In its position of a gatekeeper, the willow lashes out at everyone and everything that comes too close, with or without ill intentions, such as a stray broomstick that is smashed into pieces. In their second year at Hogwarts, Harry and his best friend Ronald Weasley are confronted by the Whomping Willow after they fly the magical Ford Angelica into the tree. Obviously infuriated, the tree reacts by assaulting the intruders frantically. A very similar scene plays out a year later when Ron is dragged underneath the Whomping Willow into the secret tunnel and Harry and Hermione Granger try to surpass the angry tree to help him. This scene also reveals a significant element about the mobility of the tree: Pressing a tiny knot on its roots immobilises the tree and lets you enter the secret tunnel without being attacked by the massive branches. This fact, in combination with the detail that the tree was planted there deliberately by the witches and wizards, questions the intentionality of mobility and a self-reflectiveness of the willow. It suggests that the intrusion into the tree’s space merely triggers an automatic reaction in the Whomping Willow that is distinctive from actions consciously performed, thus, rendering the willow a mere automaton defined by Descartes. In the narrative, the Whomping Willow is identified as an “old and valuable tree”61, it is a magical tree yet not considered a sentient tree with an agency in its own rights. The tree’s value only lies in its role as sentinel of the secret tunnel and thus simply stands in service to the school. Thus, the tree is simply an object and even the only anthropomorphism and thus minor recognition of the tree as a potential character can rather be seen as a maintenance of their property. The tree’s feelings are recognised and its injuries from

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the incident with the Ford Angelica are tended, nevertheless, it is the tree’s labour, which is significant. The case of the Whomping Willow and its position within the world of Hogwarts reveals an anthropocentric use of nature, which legitimises the damage of the tree and regards it as unavoidable in its position as a guardian of the secret tunnel. The Whomping Willow thus does not possess the significant properties of a full arboreal non-human agent. It is able to move parts of its arboreal body, however, this does not seem to be out of its own intentions. Furthermore, although bandaged and therefore cared for as if an injured person, the willow is not ascribed any form of subjectivity and self-reflectiveness in Rowling’s narrative. In the cases of the individual trees, the implications concerning their non-human agency might be diverse. Nevertheless, the sentient proactive arboreal characters show an awareness of their surroundings and an understanding of their particular environment. They display a variety of intentionality in their individual conscious (re-)action to an intrusion and can therefore be seen as agents of nature. As rooted trees, they are only able to move parts of their arboreal body, some might be able to bend their trunk, however, their main agility is in their branches. Therefore, their mobility is limited to their individual surrounding. Although the individual sentient trees discussed might not all be overt agents for nature (except maybe the Menoa tree) in the sense that they do not act on behalf of nature in general, they still present commentaries exposing an anthropocentric behaviour and asking for a shift towards an eco-sylvan/eco-arboreal perspective. The Forest as a Sylvan Army To this point, I have established the agency of the individual rooted proactive sentient tree character, nevertheless, the most potent agents for nature can be found in the mobile proactive sentient trees who, coming together to form a forest unit, display a powerful agency in their actions against the maltreatment of nature. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Old Forest solely acts within its own forest space; however, the Ents of Fangorn Forest reveal a more advanced form of forest agency by actively going to war against their enemies. The Ents, with Treebeard already established as an educator for the sylvan realm, as well as Tolkien’s Huorns, mobile non-talking trees living in Fangorn Forest and looked after by the Ents, can be seen as individual arboreal non-human agents. However, their greatest strength lies in their collectiveness as one forest. In order to protect the forest from further human exploitation, the Ents gather in an Entmoot where they consciously decide whether to participate in the fight against Saruman in The Two Towers. The Entmoot is a long and tedious process, especially for the hobbits Merry and Pippin, where great value is placed on the correct

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transfer of information, which takes a long time in Old Entish. The meticulous processing of information and depicting of events can be set in connection to the slow but gradual growth of nature in general. Furthermore, it highlights the Ents’ remarkable ability to ponder consciously over their own position within the wider world as well as their task as shepherds and guardians of the forest. Considering the wanton felling of trees in Fangorn Forest, the Ents are eventually roused into action. They are aware of the interconnectivity of all things and know that whatever happens outside of their forest will also affect them in their sylvan realm. Thus, the Ents clearly exhibit an ecological thought and feel responsible for the environment in general and the world outside of Fangorn. Treebeard comments on this by stating: “I have not seen them roused like this for many an age. We Ents do not like being roused; and we never are roused unless it is clear to us that our trees and our lives are in great danger”.62 The Ents understand their own position within Middle-earth and the changing of times, knowing well that the march against Saruman will be their final revolt, “the last march of the Ents”63 against the destruction of nature. Once more, Tolkien employs a highly emotive narrative in the concept of the Ents’ last march to underline nature’s cornered position in a world that is gradually changing. Already linked to memory and history with the idea of their final march being put into a song, the Ents coming together for the last time to face their oppressors presents a gloomy picture of the sacrifice of nature and ultimately the world. At the same time, it also shows nature’s self-empowerment by taking matters into their own “branches.” It becomes clear, that the forest of Fangorn becomes an active force and intentionally reacts to the outside stimuli and the abuse of nature. Saruman’s enterprise, turning the once green valley of Isengard into an industrial area by cutting down major parts of the forest creating massive wastelands, is the ultimate threat to the forest. This wanting destruction of the forest and the further threat the orcs and Saruman pose are precisely what arouses the Ents into action. Treebeard’s statement unmistakably reflects Tolkien’s own thoughts on the subject. In his letters, Tolkien states that he is “(obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always ha[s] been; and [he] find[s] human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals”.64 This love is clearly represented in his entire world of Middleearth. The Ents are clearly capable of thinking and evaluating their situation and from this make their own conscious choices on how to act displaying a collective intentionality. Tolkien’s Ents marching collectively against industrialisation and the destruction of nature is one of the most widely known examples of sylvan non-human agency in literature. Their warfare against Saruman and his host reveals a swift, well-considered and powerful strike against industrialisation

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and the maltreatment of nature. However, the narrative cuts away from the actual assault on Isengard and the reader is only presented with the Ents’ great strength, with nature’s annexation of man-made places, in a report by the two witnesses after the event. When the two hobbits are reunited with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, Merry reveals the Ents’ and Huorns’ great arboreal strength and the rapidness of their progress. Once at the gates of Isengard, the Ents start their work by demolishing the walls and flooding the valley to douse the fires of Isengard. The angry Ents are a terrifying sight, digging their fingers and toes into the rocks, and tearing “it up like bread-crust. It [is] like watching the work of great tree-roots in a hundred years, all packed into a few moments”.65 Interestingly, Merry only likens the Ents’ work to watching trees take roots but it is precisely that: Trees doing their work in an accelerated time lapse. In a natural course of event (see the reforestation of Cair Paraval for example), the reclaiming of space by nature would take a considerably longer period. In The Two Towers, this process is amplified to show the forest’s great strength and vigour. The Ents’ dealing with Saruman is a result of their deep concern for the trees and the forest and a feeling of responsibility for the wider environment and beings of Middle-earth. Once again, the Ents as a collective forest unit have become representatives for nature as such and, by marching to war against those that would harm them, have furthermore become distinct agents for the environment as well. The powerful motif of a forest actively going to war reveals nature’s agency and demonstrates the sheer potency of its green strength. This is not only depicted in the Ents marching against extreme industrialisation at Isengard, but also in the Huorns’ march against Saruman’s hosts at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. Consequently, the arboreal characters of Fangorn Forest overpower their oppressors from two angles. The Ents demolish the foundation of excessive industrialisation in Nan Curunír, the valley of Saruman, whereas the Huorns annihilate the destructive Orcs of Isengard’s hosts in the battle at Helm’s Deep, Rohan’s fortified gorge in the White Mountains. Tolkien’s particular creation of a forest leaving its own borders to go to war originated from a deep desire to amend the iconic scene of a moving forest in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606). In a letter to the reviewer W. H. Auden from 1955, Tolkien talks about his preliminary intentions while writing The Lord of the Rings and his various creations, in particular concerning the Ents. Commenting on the Ents’ role in The Lord of Rings, Tolkien states that “their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war”.66 Tolkien refers here to the Ents; however, the short passage of the Huorns arriving in Helm’s Deep in front of the Hornburg presents

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the reader with a more natural—more forest-like—agency. Whereas the reader is presented with a detailed report about the individual Ents’ deeds during the assault on Isengard, the Huorns are only revealed as a collective unit and forest entity. The Huorns are difficult to categorise and explain; even Treebeard himself is not able to clarify all that is going on for he himself does not understand all of it. Whether or not the Huorns are explained and keep Tolkien’s inner consistency alive, they are physically described as trees, which are able to move about freely and “still have voices, and can speak with the Ents . . . but they have become queer and wild. Dangerous”.67 Consequently, they are arboreal non-human agents, as they arrive at the battlefield on their own accord to destroy the hosts of Orcs showing intentional agency, even though the reader is never presented with this specific intention just the outcome of it. Furthermore, the Huorns deliberately attack only the Orcs, only those who maltreat nature, and disregard the men of Rohan, thus are able to differentiate between foes and others and consciously react to the former. Their dispute, same as the Ents,’ is with the oppressors and adversaries of their environment foremost; a dispute that results in their intervening and thus participation in the first battle in the overall war against Sauron and his dominion over Middle-earth in the Third Age. Nature actively working against her suppressors is also depicted in Lewis’s Prince Caspian. The mythical people of Narnia, such as the Talking Beasts, the dryads and naiads, have been in hiding or fallen into a deep sleep after the Humans (Telmarines) settled in Narnia and started felling trees, thus disenchanting the land. The talking animals are aware of nature’s animism and strength as well as the forests’ importance for their overall world. They know that when nature rises again it will be a force strong enough to expel the Telmarines, who are terrified of the ancient forests. In the course of the narrative, the trees and dryads wake up, initiated by a returning Aslan, and soon join the Old Narnians in their fight against the suppressing Telmarines. Similar to the Ents, the dryads of Narnia are depicted as characters somewhere between human and tree; nevertheless, they work as a collective forest unit in this situation. The reader is presented with “woods on the move. All the trees of the world appeared to be rushing towards Aslan”.68 In the final battle over the supremacy in Narnia, the Awakened Trees overrun the Telmarines’ army and send them flying. For the Telmarines, this is a disturbing spectacle and the reader is asked: “Have you ever stood at the edge of a great wood on a high ridge when a wild southwester broke over it in full fury on an autumn evening? Imagine that sound. And then imagine that the wood, instead of being fixed to one place, was rushing at you”.69 The entire forest, although having to be awakened by some other force initially, acts as

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a collective agent for nature and the Talking Beasts in Lewis’s world against their oppressors. Tolkien’s two forest units, the Ents and Huorns of the Fangorn Forest, and Lewis’s Awakened Trees are the most advanced forms of nature agents presented in speculative literature, with the Ents at the most advanced level, due to their individual high culture. All of these three groups of tree characters can move their entire arboreal body and walk about freely, even leaving their own forest habitat. Furthermore, they exhibit some form of subjectivity, especially when looking at the Ents, as well as intentionality. They are able to consciously decide on their course of action and take matters into their own “branches.” As they move against the maltreatment of nature, in the example of extreme industrialisation in The Two Towers or the oppression of the enchanted nature in Prince Caspian for example, the Ents, Huorns and Awakened Trees can be regarded as direct agents and warriors for nature and the environment. They act on behalf of nature and everyone and everything associated with and affected by it, and so highlight the principles of interconnectivity and animism relevant for an ecocentric perspective. In the analysis of the sylvan agency, excluding the natural reforestation and the two sudden appearances in Shaw’s narrative and the Doctor Who episode, I extracted a development of agency in three stages. The first stage of agency includes the seemingly natural behaviour of the forest as discussed in the example of the Old Forest. In this category, the entire forest with its trees reacts to intruding travellers in a way that could be described as a normal, natural, performance if it were not for the overall presence in the forest and the portrayed intentionality of their actions. From the amplified behaviour of the forest, the focus shifts to the individual sentient trees, first to the rooted proactive trees. In this second stage, the rooted proactive trees, such as Old Man Willow and the Menoa tree, are able to move parts of their body; their only limitation is recognised in their rootedness to one particular place in the forest. They display a type of intentional state as they consciously decide to move their branches and roots to trap or chase off intruders. With this, a sense of subjectivity, a sense of character, is revealed in the tree characters. The final and most advanced stage contains the mobile proactive trees: Trees that are able to move freely through the forest, even outside their own forest realm. When I incorporate the analysis of the forest as a voice for nature (see table), in particular the chapter on nature voiced, it becomes evident that the two concepts together create the highest form of advocate for nature. Tolkien’s Ents are an excellent example of an effective and moral agent as well as strong voice for a nature.

SYLVAN AND ARBOREAL VOICE AND AGENCY Table created and provided by author. Sylvan and Arboreal Voice Transformative Sylvan Agency

Proactive “Common” Forest

Rooted Proactive “Common” Tree

Rooted Proactive Animated Trees Mobile Proactive Trees

Problem of Anthropomorphic Language

Paolini’s Menoa Tree (Eldest, Brisingr) Brooks’s Ellcrys (The Elfstones of Shannara) Barron’s High Willow (The Tree Girl) Sanderson’s Telepathic Trees (Sixth of the Dusk) Disney’s Grandmother Willow (Pocahontas) Zelda’s Great Deku Tree (“Ocarina of Time”) Tolkien’s Ents (The Two Towers, The Return of the King) Lewis’s Dryads (Prince Caspian, The Last Battle) Marvel’s Groot (Marvel) Tolkien’s Entish (The Two Towers, The Return of the King) Card’s ‘Father Tongue’ (The Speaker of the Dead)

Sylvan and Arboreal Agency (a) Lewis’s orchard (Prince Caspian) Jefferies’s wild England (After London) Doctor Who’s London (“In the Forest of the Night”) Shaw’s virgin forest (The Trees) (b) Tolkien’s Old Forest (The Fellowship of the Rings Le Guin’s forest of World 4470 (“Vaster than Empires and More Slow”) Baum’s Forest of the Fighting Trees (The Wizard of Oz) Clarke’s magical woods (Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) Novak’s magical forest (Uprooted) Tolkien’s Old Man Willow (The Fellowship of the Rings) Paolini’s Menoa Tree (Eldest, Brisingr) Rowling’s Whomping Willow (Harry Potter) (c) Disney’s Grandmother Willow (Pocahontas) Tolkien’s Ents (The Two Towers) Tolkien’s Huorns (The Two Towers) Lewis’s Awakened Trees (Prince Caspian)

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Speculative narratives shift the general perspective away from an anthropocentric point of view by giving its forests and arboreal characters an individual voice and agency. The forests mentioned are not inanimate places but present the reader with more layers of meaning and substance. The various sylvan realms listed here are conscious entities with individual sentient arboreal characters that are able to think and act on their own behalf and are thus elevated to something larger than the physical space. As representatives for the entire environment, the forests and individual trees become advocates for a healthy environment and educators for the characters and the reader alike, enabling them to understand the forest’s significance and value for their world, and Earth in general. By frequently concentrating on poignant imageries, especially concerning the silencing of the forest, the authors are able to establish an emotional link between humans/humanoid characters and the wider natural environment. The forests as agents guard their ecosystem and act vigorously against the maltreatment and destruction of nature by human/ humanoid races. Their actions often seem to be the ultimate response to all the wrong doings, which can be seen as a direct comment on the climatological issues tackled within the Anthropocene, even if some of the texts have been published before the new geological age has been officially defined. Protecting the forest and the environment at large, the forests of the narratives become a force to be reckoned with, displaying their inner strength and endurance to overcome their oppression eventually. NOTES 1. Christopher Manes, “Nature and Silence,” Environmental Ethics 14, no. 4 (November 1992): 340, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.5840​/enviroethics199214s45. 2. Orson Scott Card, Speaker of the Dead (London: Orbit Books, 2013), Speaker 74. 3. Christopher Paolini, Eldest (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 306. 4. Christopher Paolini, Brisingr (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 658; emphasis added. 5. Pocahontas, Video, directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg (Burbank, Walt Disney Pictures, 1995). https:​//​www​.disneyplus​.com​/de​-de​/movies​/pocahontas​ /2WjLTJt9dM5C. 17:02. 6. ThornBrian, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” YouTube video, 25:25, December 25, 2014, 02:34, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=ffIKCFnw5Dk. 7. ThornBrian, “Ocarina,” 02:06. 8. C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 388. 9. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 76. 10. Tolkien, Towers, 77.

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11. Veryl Flieger, “The Forest and the Trees: Sal and Ian in Faerie,” in Tolkien: The Forest and the City, ed. Helen Conrad-O’Briain and Gerard Hynes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 115. 12. Andrea Denekamp, “Transform Stalwart Trees: Sylvan Biocentrism in The Lord of the Rings,” in Representations of Middle-earth, ed. Martin Simonson (Zillikofen: The Walking Tree Publisher, 2015), 3. 13. Susan Jeffers, Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relations in The Lord of the Rings (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2014), 23. 14. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 377. 15. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), 52. 16. Jeffers, Arda Inhabited, 23. 17. “Groot,” Marvel, accessed October 21, 2022, https:​//​www​.marvel​.com​/ characters​/groot​/in​-comics. 18. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 212. 19. Tolkien, Towers, 77–78. 20. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), Appendix F, 519. 21. Theodor Dr Seuss, The Lorax (Gütersloh: Random House, 1971), 58. 22. George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (New York: Bantam Books), 492. 23. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1991), 227, emphasis added. 24. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Introduction,” in The Eye of the Heron & The Word for World Is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1991), 8. 25. Carol P. Hovanec, “Visions of Nature in The Word for World Is Forest: A Mirror of the American Consciousness,” Extrapolation 30, no. 1 (April 1989): 90. https:​//​doi​ .org​/10​.3828​/extr​.1989​.30​.1​.84. 26. Tolkien, Fellowship, 178–79. 27. Tolkien, Fellowship, 179. 28. The Two Towers, DVD, dir. Peter Jackson (Los Angeles: New Line Cinema, 2003), I 39:18. 29. Tolkien, Letters, 178. 30. C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 677. 31. Lewis, Battle, 677. 32. Tolkien, Towers, 104. 33. Two Towers, II, 1:18:14; cf. Tolkien, Towers, 91. 34. Tolkien, Towers, 198. 35. Tolkien, Towers, 196. 36. Lewis, Battle, 679. 37. Ali Shaw, The Trees, (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 349. 38. Shaw, Trees, 350. 39. Shaw, Trees, 350. 40. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 43.

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41. Barron, Ancient, 43. 42. Albert Bandura, “Toward a Psychology of Human Agency,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 1, no. 2 (June 2006): 164. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1745​-6916​ .00011​.x. 43. Bandura, “Towards Psychology,” 164. 44. René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, And Seeking Truth in the Sciences, trans. John Veitch, Project Gutenberg, last modified May 13, 2022, https:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/59​/59​-h​/59​-h​.htm, Part V. 45. Helen Steward, “Animal Agency,” Inquiry 52, no. 3 (May 2009): 226. https:​//​ doi​.org​/10​.1080​/00201740902917119. 46. C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 321. 47. Al Horner, “Why the Apocalypse Is Being Reimagined as a Beautiful Event,” BBC Culture, June 17, 2020, https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/culture​/article​/20200617​-why​-the​ -apocalypse​-is​-being​-reimagined​-as​-a​-beautiful​-event. 48. Doctor Who, “In the Forest of the Night,” BBC One, 45:03, October 25, 2014, https:​//​www​.amazon​.de​/gp​/video​/detail​/B00N29UGUU​/ref​=atv​_dp​_share​_cu​ _r. 38:12. 49. Doctor Who, “Forest of the Night,” 28:56. 50. Shaw, Trees, 325. 51. Shaw, Trees, 6. 52. Shaw, Trees, 6. 53. Shaw, Trees, 87. 54. L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (London: Puffin Books, 2013), 162. 55. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2004), 530. 56. Naomi Novik, Uprooted (London: Pan Books, 2015), 106. 57. Flieger, “The Forest and the Trees,” 148. 58. Tolkien, Fellowship, 153. 59. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Vaster than Empires and More Slow,” in Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, Ursula K. Le Guin (New York: New American Library, 1988), 119. 60. Flieger, “The Forest and the Trees,” 114. 61. J. K. Rowling, The Prisoner of Azkaban (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 85. 62. Tolkien, Towers, 107. 63. Tolkien, Towers, 108. 64. Tolkien, Letters, 220. 65. Tolkien, Towers, 213. 66. Tolkien, Letters, 212. 67. Tolkien, Towers, 205. 68. Lewis, Prince Caspian, 387. 69. Lewis, Caspian, 406.

PART II

Human Interaction with the Sylvan World

After having identified the sylvan and arboreal agency as well as a sylvan voice in the first part of the book, I will now direct my attention to the various relationships between the human characters and the sylvan realm. As I have outlined in the section on material ecocriticism, everything and everyone is interconnected and forms an elaborate network. Iovino and Oppermann defined material ecocriticism broadly as the study of material objects and their intra-action within this intricate network, thus, the way material objects interact with and relate to each other as well as with and to the human. Alaimo, consequently, positioned the human directly within the environment and demonstrated how the trans-corporeal body is deeply intermeshed with the material world and the binary divide between nature and culture is revoked. Within this network, both, the human trans-corporeal body and the material world, exhibit their own forms of agency and build thus a form of hybrid collective of nature and culture, as Callon and Law define it. Consequently, the fictional forest does not exist detached from any interaction with characters from outside the sylvan realm and thus, the interrelational agency and the character’s position towards the forest is significant in analysing an ecological thought and ecocritical awareness as well as a distinct environmental message in the speculative fiction. THE FOREST AS A COMMODITY AND ANTAGONIST The first chapter in part II shows that the portrayal of humans’ negative and destructive interference with the forest ecology reveals a potent ecocritical 137

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message; one that exposes an appalling dominance over nature. Characters in this category impose their individual and subjective design on the environment without any regard for its intricate network and overall significance and so destroy the forest and nature. Their relationship with the environment is one of authority and submission, categorised by Jeffers as “power over”.1 It is a corrupted method where the characters regard the environment only in relation to profit. Nature and most often everyone else as well is being oppressed to attend to the individual, to the Self. The position of supremacy is adopted by some of the prime antagonists in the analysed narratives of speculative fiction. Those characters use the forest simply as a commodity and resource for timber, for example, without understanding or caring for the overarching environmental significance of their actions. Here, the understanding of their trans-corporeal bodies is not given and the binary divide between culture and nature is maintained. Whereas these characters predominantly demonstrate disregard towards the forest and assert dominance over the environment, another form of violence against the forest and negative interference with nature can be seen as a response to the otherness of the forest (for example, the forest is destroyed out of fear). THE FOREST AS A DWELLING In stark contrast to the antagonistic characters, chapter 6 considers the sylvan cultures of the speculative fictions, who have a specific love for their sylvan place and a cultural and historical connection to it, bringing a certain enchantment to the forest. These people live in a communal relationship with the forest, thus recognise trans-corporeality, and exercise “power with” their environment. They recognise the agential realism of the natural world and appreciate its thing power. A hierarchical structure is thus nullified and an alliance is fostered with the material world. Jeffers connects this concept to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of the rhizome, which supports a non-hierarchical framework and focuses on a balanced interrelationship by connecting “any point to any other point, [where] traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature”.2 It concentrates on a shared form of power between heterogeneous groups to form an equal partnership where both parties provide for each other. Humans’ emotional and cultural link to a certain place has been conceptualised as topophilia, Greek for “love of place.” Introducing British poet John Betjeman’s Slick but Not Streamlined (1948), Wystan Hugh Auden stresses that topophilia not merely expresses “nature love” and a “regional patriotism”3 but is subject to the cultural and historical aspect of landscape in general. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard later used the term to introduce

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his analysis of ideas of felicitous space in his influential The Poetics of Space (1958). For him, this study investigates the value of the space we love. The love of and for a place establishes a link between the person and the particular locality and includes “all of the human being’s affective ties with the material environment”4, thus, linking it to the progress of a humanistic development. In our modern times, topophilia, the “love of place,” has mostly been lost through a disenchantment of the world, nevertheless, it can be recovered through the sylvan cultures. THE CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FOREST In chapter 7, I investigate characters in tune with nature and living in a positive and respectful relationship with the forest and its environment. In contrast to the previous sylvan people, the characters here do not live within the forest but in semi-residential dwellings and urban places. Nevertheless, the forest is a dominant concept in their cultural and/or spiritual or religious practices and the characters reveal the significance and therapeutic agency of the forest in their interaction with it. Consequently, topophilia is also found in the depiction of the characters living with the numinous forests and those recognising and appreciating the autonomy of the sylvan environment. I will conclude my analysis with the most overt environmental message the speculative fictions present: The discussion of environmental activism through characters who acknowledge the forest as a significant environment for the Earth at large and recognise our own place in the intricate network of the hybrid collective. In the times of environmental crisis, the direct address and representation of environmentally active characters offers a potent comment on the issues of the Capitalocene. As discussed in the introduction, the reduction of the sylvan wilderness has damaging effects for the environment and the respectful approach to and fight for the forest promotes a vital ecological thought and eco-sylvan awareness and asks the reader to re-evaluate their behaviour towards nature. NOTES 1. Susan Jeffers, Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relations in The Lord of the Rings (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014), 75. 2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum International Publishing, 1987), 23.

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3. Wysten Hugh Auden, “Introduction to Slick but Not Streamlined, by John Betjeman,” in Prose: Volume II, 1939–1948, ed. Edward Mendelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 304. 4. Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc., 1974), 93.

Chapter Five

The Forest as Commodity and Antagonist

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST FOR ITS RESOURCES As I have mentioned, the characters in this category consider themselves above nature and see the forests and their trees as sheer commodity and inanimate objects to be used. The radical and excessive logging that goes way beyond a beneficial forestry, and balanced usage of the forests’ resources is criticised and often highly moralised. What is more, the unscrupulous deforestation and dominance over nature is often linked to the corruption of the individual and their decline in moral virtues is mostly echoed in the subjugating attitude towards all beings that those characters deem lesser than themselves. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a primal narrative for analysing such a position, for the immorality of the antagonists and their drive for dominance is overtly highlighted through the depiction of a supreme arrogance towards the environment. The fall into moral decline is effectively portrayed in the downfall of Númenor, developed in various narratives and stages throughout the years.1 By looking at the topics of deforestation and imperialism, it becomes clear that the people of Númenor cause their own downfall. For their service and support in the great battle against the primordial evil Melkor, the Valar gifted the Fathers of Men, the Edain, the island of Númenor, which they raised out of the Great Water and set between Valinor and Middle-earth. Further gifts were given to the people of Númenor, chief amongst them a seedling from the lineage of the Two Trees of Valinor. Due to being forbidden to journey to the West and the Undying Lands, the Númenorean travelled east to the shores of Middle-earth, where they established themselves as 141

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benevolent instructors and guardians of the men of Middle-earth during the early decades. Yet, their yearning for Valinor and the immortality of the Elves became ever stronger so that, through their greed and intensified mistrust in the Valar, their endeavour in the east turned into an imperial enterprise. Gradually, the King’s Men became “proud men, eager for wealth, and [laying] the men of Middle-earth under tribute, taking now rather than giving”.2 This attitude of taking rather than giving is also shown in their position towards the forests. For a nation of mighty seafarers who established great harbours and settlements on the coast of Middle-earth, the need for timber is ever high, which explains the massive deforestation of the once densely forested regions of Middle-earth. The Númenorean clearly maintain the hierarchical binary between culture and nature and deny nature its agential realism by only seeing the forest as resource. Throughout their enterprises to the east, the Númenorean steadily turn their backs from the Valar until Ar-Pharazôn, the twenty-fourth king of Númenor, eventually yields to Sauron’s malicious council, felling Nimloth the Fair, the symbol of the connection to the Valar, and thus destroying all allegiance and connection to the West. The disrespectful felling of the White Tree marks the highest point of moral decline, which is followed by the ruinous invasion of Valinor.3 The hearts of the disloyal Númenoreans are filled with the desire to dominate and so “they sailed now with power and armoury to Middle-earth” to enslave the men of Middle-earth and establishing the king as “the mightiest tyrant that had yet been in the world since the reign of Morgoth”.4 With the final affront to the Valar by sailing to the west and invading Valinor, the Númenorean seal their final doom, the destruction and sinking of Númenor by the Valar and the decline in their population. The connection between the power over the environment and supremacy over other people is made evident in the later versions of the narratives depicting the downfall of Númenor, with deforestation becoming a more relevant topic in the narratives in and through The Lord of the Rings from the 1950s onwards. The ruin of Númenor is consequently illustrated as a decline in moral and ethical virtues, where greed and the lust to dominate is implemented on men and nature. The topic of severe deforestation and the correlating decline in moral and ethical virtue is overtly portrayed in Saruman’s strive for dominance in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. As already commented on, the destruction of the green valley of Isengard and the wanton felling of trees in the Fangorn Forest conveys a potent ecocritical message against a utilitarian attitude towards nature. Initially regarded in high esteem as the head of the White Council and the wisest of the Istari, the order of the wizards, Saruman turns away from aiding the people of Middle-earth and sets his mind towards his own profit. Fuelled by his increasing lust for power over others, Saruman turns Isengard into an industrial wasteland to provide for his ambition to claim the

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One Ring for himself and rule over Middle-earth. Treebeard comments on Saruman’s thrive for power by highlighting Saruman’s mind for metal and disregard of growing things. This mind of metal is already represented in his Elven name Curunír, which means ‘the Man of Craft,’ and his connection to the Valar Aulë, the Maker. Yet, Saruman perverts this sense of craftsmanship and directs all his attention to corrupting nature, by turning a once green valley into dead and industrial place. This imagery is highly reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution, thus, a capitalistic enterprise is highly criticised and moralised by Tolkien. In addition to the extreme industrialisation of the valley, Saruman creates a new and twisted race by blending the races of Men and Orcs, one that he can control directly. Saruman’s subjugation of and complete disregard for nature reveals his sheer egotism and immoral conduct towards the environment. Only being concerned about his personal gain and the strengthening of his power, Saruman lets the Orcs run roughshod over the nearby Fangorn Forest. There, they are felling more trees than they need and leave the surplus to rot in the forest. The utter disrespect and indifference towards the forest illustrates the twisted sense of Self; only one’s own needs and drives are relevant and everything else is dominated and spoiled. Saruman’s entire industrial enterprise “leads to an appropriation of nature, a utilitarian mind-set in which nature is viewed as property without an intrinsic value in and of itself”.5 Nature as simple inanimate property is stressed even more so by its abuse to fuel the fires of a war industry. In Jackson’s The Two Towers, Saruman wants the furnaces to burn at all times to accelerate his war enterprise and thus orders the deforestation of the Fangorn Forest: “The forest of Fangorn lies on our doorstep. Burn it!”6 It is evidently illustrated here where Saruman’s focus lies. His sheer malice and the Orcs’ joy about the order reveals their pleasure to dominate and destroy the living world. The visual juxtaposition between the muddy wasteland of industrial pits and the lush and dense forest close by highlights, on the one hand, the difference between a ruined and dead nature and a healthy ecosystem, and shows the imminent threat for nature by illustrating what the world might look like if people like Saruman cannot be checked. Saruman, “the tree killer”7 as the Ents call him, usurps the natural environment of Isengard and is thus the strongest example of Industrial Revolution, where in the name of modernity and progress the environment is altered drastically. In The Lord of the Rings, the desire for power is linked to the subjugation of others and nature and is consequently manifested in a moral decline of the characters. Saruman and his progress are modelled after Sauron, the greatest threat to the people of Middle-earth, with the devastated valley of Isengard becoming a copy of the barren lands of Mordor. However, Saruman has been defeated and his industrial progress eventually

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stopped by nature itself, providing a glimpse of hope and redemption for the environment. Even though the image of the once-green valley of Isengard being turned into an industrial desert reveals a potent ecological message, Saruman’s final domination of nature and people in the Shire is the most appalling example. The transformation of the peaceful Shire into a corrupted and industrial country is marked by a monotonous landscape already underlined in the description of Isengard and Mordor and amplified by the death of the Party Tree: It was one of the saddest hours in their lives. The great chimney rose up before them; and as they drew near the old village across the Water, through rows of new mean houses along each side of the road, they saw the new mill in all its frowning and dirty ugliness: a great brick building straddling the stream, which it fouled with a steaming and stinking outflow. All along the Bywater Road every tree had been felled.8

In general, the hobbits’ return to their now corrupted home comes as a shock for the characters but also the reader, for the Shire has been established as the pastoral ideal. The conversion of such a symbolic place and healthy landscape into an urban place stained with ugly brick houses and heavy industry, initiated by the hobbit Lotho’s pursuit of wealth and influence and eventually augmented by Sharky/Saruman, highlights the danger of appropriation and a utilitarian view of nature, as well as, reveals a bleak effect of industrialisation. However, it is once again the wanton destruction of the trees, and especially the Party Tree, that exposes the sheer disregard for nature and living beings. The commercial exploitation of the environment initiated by and centralised in the wanton felling of the trees reveals a disturbing image of loss and devastation, which becomes even more horrific due to its connection to the concept of war. The Orcs’ extremely malicious indifference to the ecosystem of the Fangorn Forest is revealed and the same attitude towards the environment can be found in the Orcs under Sauron’s command. In Ithilien, the garden of Gondor, the destruction of the forest is evident in the discarded tree trunks and pits of waste. The deforested areas in Ithilien and the Fangorn Forest are often compared to battlefields, similar to the previously illustrated example in The Ancient One, and are thus symbolically linked to the disastrous destruction of war. However, the connection to war is made even more explicit in the use of the forest’s wood for the various war engines. In The Two Towers, Saruman needs wood to fuel the fires of Isengard to armour his troops of Orcs, likewise, Alagaësia’s tyrant Galbatorix, in Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, needs wood to rebuild his war machines. Galbatorix’s oppressive behaviour towards his subjects in Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle is ubiquitous and most vividly demonstrated in the forceful

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capture of his dragon Shruikan. In the Dragon Riders’ lore, the dragon, still in their egg, will chose their rider and is from the moment of hatching connected to them. This bond is one of the strongest unions and will result in great strength and deep despair when broken by force, such as the death of either one. After losing his predestined dragon Jarnunvösk, Galbatorix turns his grief into madness by stealing and ultimately controlling another dragon, which is only accomplished by killing the dragon rider. In the cause of time, Galbatorix hunts down and kills every dragon rider and/or their dragon that opposes him and so establishes his absolute sovereignty over all Alagaësia. Through the unnatural and enforced bond between him and Shruikan, Galbatorix creates a strong power over relationship, which is marked by domination and perversion. His oppressive attitude towards the people and nature, here explicitly in the form of the dragons, reveals Galbatorix’s tyrannical nature and his glorification of the Self. The disrespect towards others is likewise exposed in his order to fell the tallest trees in Du Weldenvarden, which are the richest in history and growth. The Elven queen Islanzadí recognises the difference between the necessary collection of firewood and timber, however, once more, the sheer insolence towards the environment is criticised. ’Tis a practice we tolerate, for the humans must have wood, and the trees within the fringe are young and nearly beyond our influence, and we have not wanted to expose ourselves before. The teams [of men] did not stop at the fringe, however. . . . They were searching for the tallest, thickest trees—trees as old as Alagaësia itself, trees that were already ancient and fully grown when the dwarves discovered Farthen Dûr. When they found them, they began to saw them down. . . . Galbatorix wanted the largest trees he could acquire to replace the siege engines and battering rams he lost during the battle on the Burning Plains. If their motive had been pure and honest, we might have forgiven the loss of one monarch of our forest. Maybe even two. But not eight-and-twenty.9

This enterprise into the forest reveals men’s position towards nature as one of hierarchy where men, under order of Galbatorix, take what they want without any consideration for the implications and the worth of nature itself. The exploitation of those ancient trees for siege engines and battering rams used for war furthermore amplifies the concept of death and decay and the oppressive and destructive approach of Galbatorix. The indifference towards the wider ecosystem and the intricate network of forests and their subsequent domination is a prominent issue in Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest and Cameron’s Avatar as well. Both narratives discuss humankind’s destructive and oppressive endeavours on an alien planet/ moon, where they mine and cut down the forest for its natural resources

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and subjugate the Indigenous people, thus, establishing a hegemonic power. Between the two narratives, similarities and parallels can be drawn especially concerning the antagonistic characters and their position towards nature and the Indigenous sylvan cultures. In Le Guin’s novella, Captain Don Davidson embodies the blinkered anthropocentric point of view, as do Colonel Quaritch and Administrator Parker Selfridge in Avatar. Davidson’s task on Athshe is to domesticate the landscape and the people, therefore, his position as a conqueror of men and nature is immediately established. In his anthropocentric and colonial perspective, a clear hierarchy is present with humans, especially humans from Earth, on top and everything and everyone else under their command. Consequently, Davidson sees himself as an explorer and a victor, as it is “Man that wins, every time. The old Conquistador”.10 Equating man with the ‘old Conquistador,’ Davidson links himself to the long history of invasion and annexation of other countries and nations and the suppression of Indigenous people and nature. By comparing the Indigenous people to animals and thus denying them their status as humans, or considering women as mere cargo and as “prime human stock”11 only good for breeding, a hierarchical patriarchy and self-claimed superiority of the Terran male is established. This attitude is also evident in Davidson’s approach to the environment. Davidson regards nature as a simple commodity and the forest either as a resource for timber or as an obstacle to be cleared away. For him, there is no intrinsic value in the forest of nature as such and no understanding of the intricate network and interconnectedness of all lifeforms. When he first came to Athshe, the planet was covered with a dense forest but Davidson equates the healthy forest with a meaningless nothingness, thus, Davidson denies the forest its agential realism. Interpreting a healthy forest ecology as meaningless because it is not cultivated by men shows Davidson’s anthropocentric point of view. In order for the planet to become meaningful, the forest as such has to be destroyed and the trees converted into products that are valuable to men, highly reminiscent of a capitalistic culture. The forest of Athshe is only of use as a product and thus they “turn the tree-jumble into clean sawn planks, [which are] more prized on Earth than gold”.12 This leads to an understanding of the forest as commodity, a commodity to be cultivated and the Indigenous cultures to be rid of their savagery to make this new world into “a paradise, a real Eden. A better world than worn-out Earth”.13 The immediate subjugation of nature displays, on the one hand, a complete indifference towards the intricate network of the environment and additionally points to a total ignorance about the consequences of their actions. Davidson wants the planet to be a better world than worn-out Earth, however, it is exactly this appropriation of nature, through excessive deforestation and negative interference in the ecosystem, which has caused Earth’s ecosystem to crumble. Therefore, Davidson’s idea of reaching a “real” man-made Eden, a subjugated world,

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paints a paradoxical picture. Through Davidson’s point of view paired with devastating and overwhelming reports of a barren Earth, Le Guin paints a bleak prospect for the environment and cultures of Athshe, and simultaneously comments on the prospect of our primary world, if man does not change his behaviour and attitude towards nature and people. Once more, the needs and prospects of the individual or the top few are put before the wider environment, where nature’s far-reaching interconnectivity and animism and the sylvan agency is negated. A similar anthropocentric and oppressive attitude towards the environment can be found in the Terran mining operation supported by private military on Pandora in Cameron’s Avatar. Here, the audience encounters two suppressing positions towards the environment in the entrepreneur Parker Selfridge and the military Colonel Miles Quaritch. The destructive cooperation between a highly capitalistic enterprise and a military security company is displayed immediately after arriving on the moon. The first visual image of the barren place at Hell’s Gate, the operational headquarters, is effectively juxtaposed to the lush alien rainforest and so emphasises humans’ direct annexation of the place. Consequently, this first tracking shot of Pandora establishes humankind’s prime interest in the moon, its natural resources. Selfridge makes this prioritisation very clear by pointing out that the metal Unobtanium is the only reason they are on Pandora and that this is what finances Dr Augustine’s study. Selfridge’s sole regard for the extraction of Unobtanium leaves him completely indifferent to the Indigenous culture and the overall ecosystem of Pandora. The largest Unobtanium deposit, and therefore the highest profit, sits directly under the Omaticayas’ Home Tree. His initial plan is to relocate the clan, with the aid of Jake, but only to avoid any negative publicity. In this materialistic and capitalistic society, Selfridge puts money over the lives of others and the environment. Disconnected from the natural world, Selfridge focuses solely on material wealth and his own profit disregarding anything else. His calculated disinterest in the environment even turns into full-on mockery when Dr Augustine tries to explain the extraordinary link between the trees and the Omaticaya, therefore, she recognises the Na’vi and nature as a hybrid collective. Dr Augustine is aware of the interconnectivity of all lifeforms on Pandora, especially between the trees and the Omaticaya, but struggles to convey this significance to Selfridge and Quaritch. Stepping away from a spiritualistic explanation, she rationalises the interaction between the trees by using scientific language speaking to Selfridge in a way he might comprehend and accept. Yet, even a scientific value of the “electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees”14, one that could be studied and thus made profitable in a different way, is of no interest to Selfridge. As stated, he ridicules the significance of the trees for the Omaticaya and their extraordinary

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communication network. Selfridge taunts Dr Augustine and dismisses it as an esoteric idiocy: “What the hell have you people been smoking out there? (laughing) They’re just goddamn trees”.15 Selfridge consequently represents the materialistic and profit-motivated businessperson without a conscience and without any regard for the Indigenous people and the environment. Colonel Miles Quaritch takes the same anthropocentric position as Selfridge; however, his feeling of superiority and compulsion to subjugate is stronger and compares therefore more to the attitude of Le Guin’s Captain Davidson. Both characters come from a military background being commanding officers in their services and eventually turn to outright violence against the Indigenous people and the environment. Quaritch’s mission as head of security is to protect the mining enterprise from the human-hostile environment of Pandora and the defensive Omaticaya. This stands in contrast to the overall hospitable environment and initially servile Athsheans in Le Guin’s novella. In the beginning of Avatar, the hostility and alienness of the moon is highlighted for the audience, however, this is being questioned and put into perspective in the course of the film. Quaritch reveals in his “old-school safety brief”16 his animosity towards everything on the moon. In his briefing, the official position of Pandora’s hostility is underlined by a great scar running across one side of Quaritch’s face, which seems to stem from a violent encounter with the Na’vi. The scar consequently reveals a more direct and personal site to Quaritch’s hatred. Initially under Selfridge’s command, Quaritch takes full control over the attack on the Omaticaya after their relocation plans failed. As a result, the attack on the Omaticaya deviates from the preliminary materialistic project of excavating Unobtanium to a personal vendetta, with the assault on the Home Tree and especially the Tree of Souls at its centre. It is a calculated strike against the sacred trees, which represent the cultural and spiritual centre of the Omaticaya clan, and encapsulates the inconsiderate and vicious treatment of nature at the hands of man. Quaritch, with his explosive physical and military dominance at the climax of the film, becomes the central antagonist and enemy of the people and the environment. At the same time, centralising the destructive attitude towards nature and Indigenous people in the one character and thus focusing primarily on the perspective of an individual with a homicidal psychosis might take away some of the responsibility for the damaging impact on the environment by Selfridge and his highly profit-based corporation. Quaritch’s fanatical military strike against the Home Tree and Tree of Souls brings about its collapse. Nevertheless, the extensive deforestation for its natural and, in this case, literally unavailable resources is not to be buried in oblivion. The exploitation and corruption of nature for the benefit of industrialisation, commerce, even war industry, as well as personal wealth is likewise discussed in Lewis’s The Last Battle. As the final book in The Chronicles of

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Narnia, The Last Battle exposes apocalyptic events that will bring about the end of Narnia as the characters and reader knows it. Tellingly, the ruin of the once prosperous and sacrilegious land of Narnia is initiated by the deforestation of the ancient forest Lantern Waste, a forest that existed since the beginning of Narnia. The forest and more so the individual sentient trees become an emblem and symbol for the Narnian environment and the harmful approach towards it highlights the characters’ hostile attitude and moral degradation. In The Last Battle, the Ape Shift pressures the donkey Puzzle to put on the skin of a lion to disguise himself as Aslan, the creator of Narnia. Through Puzzle as the fake Aslan, Shift wants to rule over all Narnia establishing thus a regime of individualism and subjugation. Shift’s rapid progress—it only takes him three weeks to change the environment and structural life of Narnia drastically—shows the destructive potency of exploitation of the environment, especially when put in contrast to the slower transformative agency of nature. Lewis portrays this harmful attitude towards the forest exceptionally in the suffering and subsequent violent death of the dryad already discussed. The fact that it is a dryad’s tree, a sentient tree of Narnia, that is being felled makes the crime of excessive deforestation more appalling. Shift’s utter indifference for the environment is linked to pure evil and his egocentric power poses a threat to the world of Narnia. This threat to the Narnian environment, as already stated, manifests itself initially in the deforestation of Lantern Waste: Right through the middle of that ancient forest—that forest where the trees of gold and of silver had once grown and where a child from our world had once planted the Tree of Protection—a broad lane had already been opened. It was a hideous lane like a raw gash in the land, full of muddy ruts where felled trees had been dragged down to the river.17

It is the first, but surely not the last, “manifestation of Shift’s attitude. Like climate change, it is a sign or symptom of bad practices and harmful attitude that have been growing for some time”.18 The king is shocked to see the maltreatment of the ancient forest and more so is disgusted by the apparent collaboration with the Calormenes, a people to the south-east of Narnia. King Tirian is most enraged by the commercialised logging and export of timber, a trade that will be a profit for only a small minority from mainly outside of Narnia. The abuse of nature in the form of excessive and commercialised deforestation and the horrific murder of the dryads, as well as the exploitation of the Talking Beasts as manual labourers, i.e., slaves, sets the tone for the final book of the chronicle and heralds the doom of Narnia. Shift’s and the Calormenes’ subjugation of the environment, forest, trees, and Talking Beasts, is set in clear contrast to King Tirian’s care and respect for an intact

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environment and the numinous quality of nature. Similar to Tolkien, Lewis condemns here the disruptive power of extreme industrialisation and the oppression of people and nature to increase one’s own power and wealth, thus, to glorify the Self. Barron explores the topic of unreflective deforestation in his novel The Ancient One as well and presents the reader with characters that entirely disregard the exceptionality of the redwoods; they only see the sheer amount of timber they could harvest. Again, it is not the lumber industry as such that is condemned but the indifference towards the intricate network of the forest and the significance and rich history of some of the oldest living trees on Earth that is criticised. Whereas an understanding for the situation of the struggling logging community is established to some extent in the beginning of the novel, their destructive actions at the end are not excusable. In the meticulous description of the felling of the Ancient One, Barron draws out the distress of the impending doom of this ancient tree and highlights its worth as a living being. Subsequently, the logging of one of the oldest living trees and destroying a piece of living history for sheer profit is criticised and fought against in an emotional approach. It is not only in Barron’s frame narrative set in present times in Oregon that maltreatment and subjugation of the environment is witnessed. In the ancient times of the Halamis, the anthropomorphised volcano Gashra represents the evil forces against a healthy environment. Depicted as a volcano, an all-consuming and destructive force when erupting, Gashra is the primal antagonist who “thinks the whole world . . . and everything in it . . . exists solely for his benefit, to be consumed or destroyed as he chooses”.19 This is precisely shown in the depiction of the spoiled and devastated landscape around the volcano­­­. In his effort to rise to power, Gashra lays waste to the environment in a violent eruption where the ancient trees that withstand countless natural forces now succumb to the volcanic fire. The remarkable endurance and adaptability of trees is initially demonstrated, but even they have no chance against the twisted and vicious Gashra. As a destructive entity, Gashra portrays the undue maltreatment of nature and displays a conquering of nature. This habit is recognised in the humans of the reader’s contemporary time as well, where inconsiderate domination and subjugation of nature is a threat to the environment. Through the conversation between Kate and the Chieftain of the Tinnanis, Barron directly speaks to the reader and has them reflect on the environmental crisis and the indifference to the forest and the wider environmental network by the masses. Overall, the characters analysed represent a negative force establishing a clear “power over” relationship through a form of authority and dominance over the entire ecosystem, including people they deem lesser than themselves. The binary divide between culture and nature is here uphold and nature is

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denied its agential realism. The characters are often the central antagonists in the narratives and their self-centred despotic manner stands in strong contrast to an inclusive and harmonious relationship with the environment. In particular, the treatment of the trees and forests illustrates the moral corruption of the various characters. The characters’ indifference to the ecosystem manifested in the exaggerated deforestation causes an ecological devastation and underlines their hierarchical perception of the world. Once again, the treatment of the forests becomes an emblem of the overall disregard of the intricate network and significance of the wider environment. The forest is simply seen as a commodity and used as a resource for timber for their own or corporate profits and is denied all sylvan agency. In some cases, the alarm of deforestation is augmented through the use of the wood for war industry, as seen in Saruman’s destruction of the valley of Isengard or Galbatorix’s order to fell the tallest trees in Du Weldenvarden for his siege engines. The devastation of the forest is therefore amplified in the horrific connection to war and further death and destruction. In addition, the utter disinterest in the trees and other lifeforms is portrayed in some of the characters’ wanton felling of trees without any purpose. Leaving the chopped trees to rot stresses the twisted and corrupted mentality of the characters and signals their glorification of dominance and perversion. Consequently, the arboreal agency, the individual worth of the living tree and the tree’s and forest’s overarching significance for the ecological network is denied. With the portrayal of a hyperbolic maltreatment of the forest, the narratives highly criticise the subjugation of nature and the loss of a vital ecosystem. This presents the strongest ecological message by exposing and condemning an appalling dominance and oppression of nature within the narrative and, simultaneously, provides a comment on the disregard and maltreatment of the ecosystem in the primary world of the reader. In The Trees, Sebastian, after the group has finally reached their destination, condemns the alteration of a once green valley into a wasteland. He observes that the people’s need to go back to an agrarian and industrial community as soon as possible turns the valley into a muddy settlement. This can also be transferred to the reader’s world and read as a remark on their massive deforestation programmes. Barron as well, through the Chieftain of the Tinnanis, summarises this problematic and disastrous attitude and provides an overt statement on the Anthropocene hoping that his reader might reflect on the current climate crisis: I will tell you about the humans of your time. They are thankless, grasping, and unconnected. To themselves, to the land, to their fellow beings. They know no wonderment. Their memory is short, and their vision is shorter. They believe the world is nothing more than a bundle of firewood for their use, to be burned and the coals discarded.20

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THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST OUT OF FEAR The maltreatment and obliteration of the vibrant sylvan ecology for its resources reveals a capitalistic disregard for the wider environment and their endeavour for personal wealth and power. However, the forests in the various speculative fictions are under attack due to the characters’ distress and terror of the forest as well. The forest has been apprehended as ancient living place and safe haven, yet also as the primal antagonist to civilisation and thus a place of fear and danger. The general threat of the forest is composed of the reality of claustrophobia and disorientation by losing your path as well as the possibility of encountering dangerous animals. As a result, this fear is utilised in stories and cautionary tales, such as the legend of Gilgamesh as well as the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and has found its way into the cultural memory of Western civilisation. Human’s primal fear of the forest and its correlation with storytelling is effectively demonstrated in the Doctor Who episode “In the Forest of the Night.” The spontaneous reforestation overnight is met with controlled fires to form paths through the forest to create order and structure in a primal wilderness. However, the situation quickly escalates, as the trees are unaffected by the fire, so that the government sees itself forced to adopt measures that are more drastic by releasing chemicals to kill the trees. In the government’s reaction, the fear of the unknown and the Other in the form of the primal forest is clearly expressed and later established as ungrounded. Nonetheless, the dread of the forest is very real in this episode: The clear path is blocked, a young girl gets lost and predators escape from London Zoo to roam the forest. Trying to make their way through the forest, the Doctor comments on human’s primal instincts and anxieties connected to the dense forest and their ability to deal with them. By constantly comparing their situation to classical fairy tales, such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel,” the Doctor establishes the link between factual threat and the subconscious dread of the forest, thus the psychological hostile sylvan agency, as well as storytelling in general: “You remembered the fear and you put it into fairy stories”.21 As a result, the forest has become a menacing idea in the subconscious mind, in contrast to the concept of the forest as a healing place. In the former case, the forest is “in all the stories that kept you awake at night. The forest is mankind’s nightmare”.22 In the cultural Western memory, the primal forest represents the perilous wilderness, which is even more threatening at night and is thus defined as a nightmare. It is interesting to note, that the title of the episode refers to such a forest at night, yet the plot of the episode solely unfolds during broad daylight. Consequently, the forest in the title could

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denote to the psychological image of the primal wilderness and the humans’ subconscious sensation of fear and anxiety within it. Thus far, the characters experiencing this discomforting presence have not directly acted out their fear of the forest. Nevertheless, the forest’s hostile agency and the connected anxieties of the characters drive some towards violence and retribution. In contrast to the previously discussed maltreatment of nature for personal and capitalistic profit, the aggression towards the forest here arises from an internal terror and fright of the unknown, the sylvan Other. The forest has always been associated with the dangerous supernatural; the Other can however additionally be the forest itself. The forest of fantasy and speculative fiction consequently offers a habitat for the Other and simultaneously becomes the Other, where “human legitimacies and sometimes even nature principles do not apply while time and space forms an unstructured cluster”.23 I have already considered the Telmarines’ fear of Narnia’s ancient forests and its inhabitants. On the one hand, the Telmarines use the forest’s timber for their agricultural and commercial enterprise. Nevertheless, their general abuse and disregard for the forest stems from a deep-rooted fear of the forest and its inhabitants above all. Connected to Aslan and accommodating the Other—the remaining dwarfs, fauns, Talking Animals, and so forth—the great woods have been villainised and diminished to ghost stories. Prince Caspian’s tutor, the half-dwarf Doctor Cornelius, explains the Telmarines’ relationship and their fear of the forest as a place full of ghosts. Acting upon this fear in order to subdue and conquer the unknown, the Telmarines supressed and silenced the Talking Beasts and cut down the ancient trees; they silenced nature.24 The anthropocentric point of view with human’s incomprehension of nature’s animism and its more-than-human lifeforms, accomplished by deforestation and the subjugation of nature and extinction of the Talking Animals, is overtly criticised in Lewis’s Prince Caspian. The colonisers’ fear of the Other, here the fear of the forest and everything connected to it, establishes a human domination over nature leading to the disenchantment of nature and a loss of a healthy environment. The fear of the forest is frequently reduced through deforestation, thus, the characters try to supress and eventually annihilate the threat. Even the peaceful and nature-loving hobbits of Tolkien’s legendarium are not entirely free of guilt when it comes to subduing nature. For the hobbits of Buckland, the Old Forest represents the classical dark and dangerous forest out of fairy tales and therefore an immediate threat when it plants itself close to their cultivated hedge. The transformative sylvan agency and the closing in of the wilderness at the edge of their cultivated land is seen as a direct assault against their land and culture. Fearing the enclosing forest, the hobbits push back the sylvan wilderness by cutting the trees and burning them in a great

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bonfire. The hobbits’ aggressive disposition towards the Old Forest originates from classical images of the dark and dangerous forest looming at the edge of civilisation. The hobbits’ reaction is therefore in line with the long-standing practice of humanity clearing the forest in order to create open spaces and make way for cultivated lands. In the world of speculative fiction, however, the forest’s reaction and more importantly judgement of such an anthropocentric treatment of nature, even in minimal quantity, is overtly portrayed and highlighted in the menacing threat emanating from the Old Forest. The harmful relationship and attitude towards each other consequently derive from this unfriendly interplay between the hobbits and the Old Forest. The hobbits of Buckland thus fear the Old Forest because of its dark qualities and its metaphorical image as a wilderness closing in on their community and civilisation. Whereas the forest’s overall threatening presence is previously challenged by the characters, Martin’s Andals in A Song of Ice and Fire dread Westeros’ godswoods and their weirwoods because of their religious and mythological significance for the children of the forest. The children of the forest, and later the Wildlings from Beyond the Wall, carved faces into the weirwoods as a representation of the Old Gods. Their animistic belief was confronted by the religion of the Andals, the Faith of the Seven, which they brought to Westeros thousands of years before the narrative time. Conquering Westeros and raging war against the First Men and the children of the forest, and by that carrying out the children’s near genocide, the Andals cut down the sacred weirwoods and destroyed almost all the ancient godswoods in the South. The desecration and destruction of the godswoods is an act of religious domination and subjugation by the conquering Andals, which later turns into an anxiety and discomfort around the watchful eyes of the carved weirwoods. Once again, an ominous presence within the ancient godswoods has a profound effect on the characters. As I have analysed, the characters seem to react towards an ominous presence emanating from the forest. In contrast to the maltreatment and excessive deforestation of the forest to gain its resources for personal and capitalistic profit, their actions against the forest are often not as emotionally charged and rigidly condemned. In most incidents, the reader encounters singular episodes of abuse of nature and the forest. Occasionally, these episodes are eventually resolved through an educational process by which the characters begin to understand the intricate network and animism of the forest. To a certain extent, the encountered forests do represent primal wildernesses, where one loses their path and encounters wolves, such as in “In the Forest of the Night” or Shaw’s The Trees for instance, or where the trees actively attack the travellers, such as the Old Man Willow in the Old Forest. However, the fear of the forest and so the forest’s psychological hostile agency often comes back to the idea of mirroring one’s own intentions and attitudes. Tolkien’s

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Aragorn states about the forest of Lothlórien, and we could assert this claim to almost all other forests in the analysed speculative fictions, that it is “fair and perilous; but only evil need fear it, or those who bring some evil with them”.25 The maltreatment of the forest out of fear is predominantly triggered by a prefabricated narrative of the dark and dangerous wilderness stored in cultural memory. The particular characters initially exhibit no connection to the forest world and no understanding of the forest’s overall significance and the interconnectivity of the entire environment. NOTES 1. In this analysis, the focus will be on the Akallabêth, “The Downfall of Númenor” (311–39), as it is published within The Silmarillion (1979). 2. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), 317. 3. Gerard Hynes, “The cedar is fallen: empire, deforestation and the fall of Númenor,” in Tolkien: The City and the Forest, ed. Helen Conrad-O’Briain and Gerard Hynes (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 125. 4. Tolkien, Silmarillion, 330. 5. Chris Brawley, Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoetic Fantasy Literature (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 113. 6. The Two Towers, DVD, dir. Peter Jackson (Los Angeles: New Line Cinema, 2003), I 20:14. 7. J. R. R. The Two Towers (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 214. 8. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 360. 9. Christopher Paolini, Brisingr (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 84–85. 10. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd., 1991), 177. 11. Le Guin, Word for World, 173. 12. Le Guin, Word for World, 178. 13. Le Guin, Word for World, 175. 14. Avatar, DVD, dir. James Cameron (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2010), 1:28:32. 15. Avatar, 1:29:06; emphasis added. 16. Avatar, 07:31. 17. C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 679. 18. Matthew Dickerson and David O’Hara, Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The Environmental Vision of C. S. Lewis (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009), 127. 19. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 143. 20. Barron, Ancient, 152. 21. Doctor Who, “Forest of the Night,” BBC One video, 45:00, October 25, 2014. 22. Doctor Who, “Forest of the Night,” 20:05.

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23. Iris Gassenbauer, “Into the Woods: Getting Lost and Meeting Witches,” Fafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 1, no. 3 (2009): 21. 24. C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 338. 25. J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring, (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 439.

Chapter Six

The Forest as a Dwelling

MYTHICAL PEOPLE OF THE FOREST The Elves of Tolkien’s mythology are a complex and sophisticated race and are intricately connected to their individual places and Middle-earth as a whole. They cannot simply be analysed as one body, for there exist various groups according to their living environments. They are subdivided into different families and divisions in relation to whether they made the Great Journey to the Land of the Valar in the First Age or stayed behind in Middle-earth and so never laid eyes on Valinor and the Two Trees. Nevertheless, all Elves share a notion of topophilia, a love of place, as they have a profound influence on their respective environments. Their positive interrelationship and their position within Middle-earth as scholars and healers is revealed in their desire to understand and preserve the beauty of the natural world, which is crafted into their Three Rings. The Elves’ purpose of existence in Middle-earth is therefore to heal the land and counterbalance the destructive forces of evil. As a positive strength, the Elves are deeply devoted to Middle-earth and want to preserve the beauty and naturalness of all things. Thus, their love of place and positive interconnection with the environment establishes the Elves as morally good characters within the narrative’s framework. The Elves’ connection to the sylvan realm of Middle-earth is best exemplified by their relationship to the forest of Lothlórien in The Fellowship of the Ring. The love of place and the love for the forest is visible from the moment the fellowship beholds Lothlórien in the distance. Legolas, himself an Elf of the woodland realm of Mirkwood, paints a romantic picture of a golden wood. Lothlórien is a clean and open forest described in the warmest colours with no shaggy undergrowth or menacing presence, contrasting it instantaneously to the Fangorn Forest and the Old Forest (forests that are not inhabited by Elves). Boromir alone, and initially the dwarf Gimli, feels uncomfortable 157

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underneath the trees stating that it is a threatening place from which only a few will escape unharmed. Through the beauty and magic of the Elves, who cultivate and thus civilise the forest, Lothlórien is transformed into a paradisiacal garden reminiscent of the Undying Lands. The nostalgic connection between the forest and the Elves becomes apparent and reveals a reciprocal connection between them. This is also evident in their name, as the Elves of Lothlórien are called Galadhrim, the Tree-people. Tolkien’s Galadhrim are thus closely linked to their individual sylvan place and live in a harmonious relationship with the land and everything interacting with it. Sam points to the specific interconnection between the Elves and Lothlórien by recognising that “they seem to belong here, more even than Hobbits do in the Shire. Whether they’ve made the land, or the land’s made them, it’s hard to say”.1 Belonging to the land, the Elves build their homes within the natural architecture of the forest. Here, we can clearly see the intermeshing of the Elven characters and their environment. Caras Galadhon, or the City of the Trees, is incorporated into the forest with the houses constructed on platforms along the tree trunks. Everything is carefully designed to not disrupt the forest’s natural growth. By not clearing space for their own needs, the Elves’ enjoyment of the forest as such is revealed and its sylvan agency and nature’s agential realism is acknowledged. The appreciation of the forest and especially the love for the individual tree for its own sake brings joy and comfort to the Elves. This can be seen in Legolas’s enthusiasm when talking about Lothlórien and the Fangorn Forest, which he tries to pass on to his companions. Tolkien himself states that the devotion to the individual tree and the forest is what makes Lothlórien so enchanted: “Lothlórien is beautiful because the trees were loved”.2 Because of the Elves’ environmental appreciation and ecological thought, Brawley claims that the “chapter on Lothlorien is, perhaps, the most moving chapter in relation to the love of the earth itself”.3 Similar to Tolkien’s Elves, Paolini’s Elves in his Inheritance Cycle are a fair and noble race whose beauty and powerful magic primarily stems from the dragons’ influence during ancient times. Their longevity and magic establish them as more powerful and intelligent than the mortal races of Alagaësia. Furthermore, the Elves have a greater understanding and innate knowledge of the world and its true names than most dwarves and humans, thus increasing their potential further. Although equipped with powerful magic and a possible dominance over others by knowing their true names, the Elves do not abuse this power but live in balanced unison with the world around them. Whereas Tolkien’s Elves are diverse in terms of their subculture and familial relations as well as their homes, Paolini’s Elves seem to be a rather homogeneous race without many alterations, although equipped with an elaborate history as well. This might be because the Elves’ only remaining home in Alagaësia is the forest region of Du Weldenvarden. As their predominant

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habitat for thousands of years, the forest Du Weldenvarden is cherished and protected by the Elves. Comparable to the forest of Lothlórien, the Elves live in a reciprocal relationship with the forest and consider themselves a part of the environment. Their magic protects the forest from natural forces, such as ravaging storms, and lets it thrive to “an emerald sea of ancient oaks, beeches, and maples”4 heavy with the sweet scent of wildflowers. In exchange, the forest provides the Elves with a secluded and hidden realm where they can live in peace from all the troubles of Alagaësia. Consequently, the interrelational agency of the forest and the concept of trans-corporeal body is evident in Du Weldenvarden. The respect for the forest and every living creature, flora and fauna, is present in the Elves’ interconnection with their environment, which is overtly represented by their ability to connect with the environment in forms of telepathy. Due to being a dragon rider, Eragon shares this bond and is able to connect with the minds of the entire flora and fauna, such as ants as well as the Menoa tree and forest flowers. The Elves cherish and feel responsible for the forest, especially because of their ancient spiritual and cognitive connection to it and everything living. The Elven queen Islanzadí describes the significance and link to Du Weldenvarden as the forest being “an extension of our bodies and minds. Any hurt it suffers is our hurt as well”.5 The concept of interconnectivity and interrelational agency between several parties, here the Elves and the forest, is presented and insinuates a form of animism and sylvan agency. The appreciation of the purposive sylvan agency and the natural world is, furthermore, exemplified in the fact that the Elves live in scattered dwellings in the forest to not damage the environment by overpopulation. Small dwellings can be found within the forest, yet, the sylvan centre marks the Elven city Ellesméra, similar to Tolkien’s Caras Galadhon. Although a substantial city, Ellesméra is incorporated into the forest in such a way that Eragon does not recognise it immediately as such. At first it looked to Eragon like a place where deer might bed for the night. But as he continued to stare, he began to pick out paths hidden among the brush and trees: soft warm light where normally there would be auburn shadows; an odd pattern in the shapes of the twigs and branches and flowers, so subtle that it nearly escaped detection—clues that what he saw was not entirely natural. He blinked, and his vision suddenly shifted as if a lens had been placed over his eyes, resolving everything into recognizable shapes. Those were paths, aye. And those were flowers, aye. But what he had taken to be clusters of lumpy, twisted trees were in fact graceful buildings that grew directly out of the pines.6

The Elves have built their dwellings within the setting of the forest and not disturbed its natural growth. By this, they signal an understanding and

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pleasure in an, to some extent, unobstructed wilderness. Obviously, the forest area in which Ellesméra is located is not an untouched wilderness but more a cultivated garden forest. Nevertheless, the Elves take great care in making sure that each “building enhanced and complemented its surroundings, blending seamlessly with the rest of the forest until it was impossible to tell where artifice ended and nature resumed”.7 Consequently, Paolini’s Elves value the forest and in extent the overall environment for its own sake by living in a balanced harmony within Du Weldenvarden. Barron’s Tinnani in The Ancient One, as well as Martin’s children of the forest in A Song of Ice and Fire, live consciously in a communal position with their respective environments as well. Diverging most from the human shape amongst the discussed sylvan cultures, the Tinnani is an “owl-like person”8, with eyes of an owl, feathers around the body and wings on their shoulders. The merger between the body of a human and that of an owl hints at a close symbiosis between the various lifeforms and associates the Tinnanis with ancient wisdom, symbolised by the owl. According to the mythology of the Halamis, the Tinnanis nourish the forest and keep it healthy through their own magic. This magic stems from an enchanted Touchstone, which gives them the power to interconnect with all living beings, flora and fauna. The stewardship of the Tinnanis establishes them as guardians of the environment and interconnects their life and power to a prosperous nature. When Gashra becomes stronger and heats up the waters of the Blue Lake in which the Tinnanis’ home Ho Shantero, the Island that Moves, is located, the strength of the Tinnani is weakened. Consequently, the forest perishes and its flora and fauna can only be restored through the destruction of Gashra and the restoration of the broken Touchstone. The Tinnanis’ respect for and interconnectivity with the forest and all life is embodied in the colossal engraving of the Tree of Life in their main hall which shows and supports “all the living beings ever found in this world”.9 Therefore, honouring the tree as a source and provider of life is a fundamental attitude of the Tinnanis. The worshipping of trees and identifying the forest as a sacred place is also evident in the belief system of Martin’s children of the forest. The children alongside the giants are amongst the first people to live in Westeros during the Dawn Ages. Inspired by Celtic and Druidic belief in the animism of nature, Martin’s children worship “the innumerable gods of the streams and forests and stones. It was the children who carved the weirwoods with faces, perhaps to give eyes to their gods so that they might watch their worshippers at their devotion”.10 After a long war with the invading First Men at the end of the Dawn Age, the children of the forest sealed a pact to ensure the protection of the remaining weirwoods and retreated from the lands of Westeros, except for the great forests. By the narrative time of A Song of Ice and Fire, the numbers of the children have been diminished and they have been forced into hiding,

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being thus reduced to a mythical tale for children. Most of the children of the forest now live in a vast cave system underneath an ancient weirwood grove beyond the Wall in the Land of Always Winter, far away from the world of men. The roots of the weirwoods stabilise the caverns and provide intricate networks amongst the numerous hollows the children live in. The roots penetrate all space and life in the caves and grasp even for the dead, which figuratively depicts the interrelational arboreal agency. The roots reaching for and through the children hint at the intricate connection the children share with the weirwoods. In death, they become one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead, they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you that the weirwoods are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die, they become part of that godhood.11

For the children, the trees, and especially the carved weirwoods, are not simply a part of the natural world but, more importantly, their living history and memory. Their strong association with the weirwoods, intensified by the children going into the wood, shows the deep interconnectivity between the lifeforms and emphasises the animism of the natural world. The men of Westeros have highlighted the children’s connection to the forest by naming them the children of the forest. However, they call themselves those who sing the song of the earth in the True Tongue. For the singers, thus, not only the forest and the trees are of significance but the entire environment and a general balance of and interconnection with it. They live, same as the other mythical sylvan cultures discussed, in a relationship of equal status with nature and their environment. Yet, they too are diminishing in a world dominated by mankind: Now [our sun] sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.12

INDIGENOUS SYLVAN CULTURES Le Guin’s Athsheans in The Word for World Is Forest regard themselves as part of the natural environment and thus represent a hybrid collective. In this way, they pay the greatest respect to their forest and the environment at

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large, recognising nature’s agential realism. For the indigenous population of Athshe, the forest is their central habitat as well as cultural foundation and, consequently, they acknowledge the forest’s significance for the entire ecosystem as well as its interconnectivity with the people. Athsheans build their lodges and houses in groves beneath and around trees so that their villages become part of the surrounding nature. More importantly, a direct connection between particular trees and the Athshean is made explicitly by using trees to systematise their individual families, and even marriage-clans, such as the Apple, Birch or Holly. Selver himself is “of the Ash”.13 Even his name Selver shows similarities to the Latin word “sylva” meaning “forest” or “wood,” establishing him as a character of and connected to the forest. Overall, the Athsheans’ culture is so intertwined with the forest and the life within it that all of their images and ideas relate to the sylvan realm. The deep correlation and coexistence between the forest and its inhabitants is evident in the Athsheans’ identity as part of that natural world: “the substance of their world was not earth, but forest. Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood”.14 Ian Watson recognises in “The Forest as Metaphor for Mind” (1975) the Athsheans’ way of living within and identifying themselves even physically as part of the forest “metaphorically as a kind of external collective unconscious”.15 This is additionally highlighted in the Athsheans’ ability to control their dreams consciously. In their dreams, places and time become interlocked and can be manipulated and manoeuvred. The successful dream control, which is in complete equilibrium with the harmonious relationship with the forest, is equated with sanity in the Athsheans’ world, and can be seen as a process of forest bathing in which the therapeutic agency of the forest is appreciated. Consequently, the Athsheans’ health and sanity are profoundly interwoven with the health of the forest, which shows the enormous significance of the purposive and interrelational sylvan agency, in particular, when juxtaposed to the Terran attitude to the forest discussed previously. Cameron’s indigenous Omaticaya clan in Avatar values the forest and the interconnectivity of all lifeforms in a similar way than Le Guin’s Athsheans. The Omaticaya live deep within the primal forest of Pandora with their village being sheltered amongst the roots and within the Home Tree, the tallest tree of an ancient grove of magnificent trees. This imposing tree marks the centre of their world where their daily life takes place; the tree provides them with a place to sleep, to eat and for gatherings. The Omaticayas’ strong emotional connection to the particular tree is evident, calling it home for instance. This connection is furthermore highlighted in their reluctance to leave the Home Tree before the military attack by the Terran invaders.16 Its destruction comes as the ultimate shock and symbolises, partly, the end of their world.

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For the Omaticaya, the individual tree as well as the entire ecosystem is not simply a lifeless object to be utilised but a spiritual home. The general Na’vi culture, same as the Athsheans, believe in and maintain a harmonious relationship with the animistic nature: Everything and everyone is interconnected and should be respected. Jake explains this relationship to the forest in his video-log after going through intensive teachings from Neytiri, who “talks about a network of energy that flows through all living things. She says energy is only borrowed—and one day you have to give it back”.17 The profound interconnectedness of all lifeforms is understood by all Na’vi in a spiritual and mythical sense and is founded on their worship of the deity Eywa, the goddess of all living things, mirroring Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Through this idea, the sylvan ecology becomes spiritually animated and connected to the Na’vi’s religious belief system. Within the Omaticaya culture, the spiritual leader Tsahik, the most important female of the clan, interprets the will and signs of Eywa and so guides the people in their communal relationship with the environment. However, as previously analysed with regard to the mythological and cultural significance of the Tree of Souls, the most meaningful and poignant connection to the environment is represented through their physical connection and physical interrelationship, the tsaheylu. The idea of interconnectivity of all is made visible through this bond and the network of energy flows through all of them. Whereas Neytiri uses a language that focuses on this mythical element of the interconnection between the Na’vi and their environment and the forest’s own agency, Dr Augustine provides scientific and rational explanations for the inter- and intra-relational sylvan agency and the value and wealth of Pandorean nature: Dr Augustine: I’m not talking about pagan voodoo here—I’m talking about something real, something measurable in the biology of the forest. . . . What we think we know—is that there’s some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. And each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora— Selfridge: Which is a lot I’m guessing. Dr Augustine: It’s more connections than the human brain. Get it? It’s a network—it’s a global network. And the Na’vi can access it—they can upload and download data—memories—at sites like the one you just destroyed.18

It becomes clear that Dr Augustine is a scientist and, thus, her focus lies on the biological and chemical reactions found in the Pandorean environment. Nevertheless, Dr Augustine indicates the extraordinary connection the Na’vi share with their environment. Once more, the difference between the two

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ways of looking at the same idea is highlighted through the choice of words. Whereas Dr Augustine sees it as a technical process of “uploading and downloading data,” she is aware of the emotional and spiritual connection centralised by an exchange of memories. Sharing your memories with the entire environment is the highest form of interconnectivity that shows the Na’vi’s spiritual correlation with the forest and the harmonious relationship with the entire environment. Altogether, Tolkien’s and Paolini’s Elves, Barron’s Tinnanis and Martin’s children of the forest, as well as Le Guin’s and Cameron’s Indigenous sylvan cultures, share a profound and harmonious connection to the environment and especially their forest world. Their love and respect for the forest is omnipresent and is reflected in their attitude towards the environment as well as their spiritual and cultural identity. The forest is their habitat and becomes thus the most significant location and provider for the people. In this way, their lives and trans-corporeal bodies are profoundly intermeshed with the environment and so they form an intricate network. Although often building entire cities within the forest, the sylvan cultures do not impose an artificial architecture onto the land but use the forest’s and the trees’ agential realism and natural growth to construct their flats, houses and city seamlessly into the environment. The buildings and the general design of the dwellings are elaborately interwoven with the forest so that the line between artificiality and naturalness is oftentimes blurred and only by looking closely is the veil lifted and the city within a cultivated forest revealed. Establishing their dwellings in the forest results in the place becoming the physical and spiritual centre for the people. The elevation of the forest to a more than inanimate place and object links it to their history and culture and so they, the sylvan people and the sylvan place, live in a communal and reciprocal relationship as equals, providing an interrelational agency and ecological thought. Within this relationship, both parties depend on each other to prosper: The people derive their strength and aptitude from the surrounding forest which itself profits from their tender care. As a result, a non-hierarchical relationship is established where both sides form a powerful alliance and hybrid collective demonstrating power with. In addition, a highly emotional bond towards the forest and the environment at large is illustrated in the relationship between the dwellers and the forest. The love for the place is regularly mirrored in their language and imageries bringing a certain enchantment to the forest world. Consequently, through a respectful and spiritual attitude towards the forest, an ecocritical message and ecological thought is transmitted first to the other characters and ultimately to the audience as well, focusing on a reciprocal relationship between people and the environment. However, their overall representation can be questioned and might be regarded as an oversimplification

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of an ecological Indigenous people, where, in the example of the Na’vi, “the myth of the ecologically noble savage presents ‘Indian-ness’ as ‘the elixir’ to fix white civilization”.19 The Elves and magical peoples, who see nature’s intrinsic value and live according to the idea of animism and interrelatedness, represent furthermore a dwindling culture and thus do not present an applicable approach for the primary world of the audience. Consequently, the sylvan cultures and their spirituality seem to be a thought of the past and not entirely suitable for the modern world of men. NOTES 1. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 468. 2. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 419. 3. Chris Brawley, Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoetic Fantasy Literature (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2014), 110. 4. Christopher Paolini, Eldest (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 158. 5. Christopher Paolini, Brisingr (London: Corgi Books, 2011), 85. 6. Paolini, Eldest, 221–22. 7. Paolini, Eldest, 222. 8. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 149. 9. Barron, Ancient, 272. 10. George R. R. Martin et al., The World of Ice and Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2014), 6. 11. George R. R. Martin, A Dance of Dragons (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 495. 12. Martin, Dance, 497. 13. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1991), 192. 14. Le Guin, Word for World, 240. 15. Ian Watson, “The Forest as Metaphor for Mind: ‘The Word for World Is Forest’ and ‘Vaster than Empires and More Slow,’” Science Fiction Studies 2, no. 3 (1975): 231. 16. Avatar, DVD, dir. James Cameron (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2010), 1:33:50. 17. Avatar, 1:01:23. emphasis added. 18. Avatar, 1:28:20. emphasis added. 19. Chris Klassen, “Avatar, Dark Green Religion, and the Technological Construction of Nature,” Cultural Studies Review 18, no. 2 (2012): 152.

Chapter Seven

The Cultural and Environmental Significance of the Forest

LIVING WITH THE NUMINOUS FOREST As a cultural concept, forests have always represented significant archetypes for humanity and thus provided diverse spaces for it, so for example for religious and/or spiritual devotion. The particular notion of the forest as a religious place is central in Martin’s cultural depiction of the Northerners and Wildlings in A Song of Ice and Fire. Although separated by the Wall dividing Westeros from the lands in the far north and so developing a contrastive culture subsequently, the Northerners and Wildings share one central aspect, their religious belief. The Northerners, with the House Stark as the central family and Wardens of the North in the beginning of the book cycle, are part of the hegemonic kingdom of Westeros, whereas the Wildlings see themselves as a “free folk . . . with neither lords nor kings and [they] need bow to neither man nor priest, regardless of their birth or blood or station”.1 Even though fundamental differences can be detected in their cultures, both people worship the Old Gods of the children of the forest as both identify themselves as direct descendants from the First Men, who adopted the animistic belief system from the children themselves. As the oldest faith in Westeros, the Old Gods are challenged by the arrival of the Andals bringing with them the Faith of the Seven, thousands of years after the pact between the First Men and the children of the forest. In line with the Druidic and Pagan ideas of animism, the Northerners and Wildlings worship the gods in nature and especially in the exemplary weirwoods and the heart trees. The godswoods and their heart trees are abundant in the North of Westeros. The centrality of the tree, and especially the heart tree, within the faith of the Old Gods is evident and their worship is distinctly portrayed in the customs 167

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of House Stark. The Stark family is one of the focal houses in Martin’s narrative and thus provides a central insight in and depiction of a culture that is associated with the old ways, such as the high value of sincere honour and integrity and a nature-oriented worshipping. The godswood of Winterfell is a place of worship and thus a vital site in their culture that aligns itself with the concept of older traditions. It is a primal wilderness of untouched forest and thus a connection to ancient times for the men of Winterfell. In addition, the godswood is not only a symbolic centre of their faith but also a material and physical centre of their daily lives as it is located within the walls of Winterfell. The godswood and the Northerners’ culture become therefore intertwined, thus, they form a hybrid collective, an intricate relationship between forest and culture. For the Starks, the godswood of Winterfell—as well as the other godswoods of the North for all Northerners—is a “place of deep silence and brooding shadows”2 in which to perform their cultural and spiritual rituals: Eddard Stark cleans his greatsword Ice after the execution of a deserter; Jon Snow, his presumed bastard son, takes the oath of the Night’s Watch, as well as marriages are officiated here. Thus, Winterfell’s old forest is a deeply spiritual setting for contemplation and provides peace and tranquillity for the worshipper, thus, the therapeutic sylvan agency makes the forest a great place for devotion. Especially Bran visits the godswood of Winterfell frequently after the departure of his entire family and the security of home has been challenged in order to find peace and comfort in the presence of the weirwoods and the heart tree. The Old Gods reside in the godswoods of the North and thus the primal forest provides a spiritual foundation for the Northerners. However, the farther to the south one travels in Westeros, the godswoods change into botanical gardens without the ancient weirwoods and heart trees at their centre. As a result, the perception of and the attitude towards the godswood changes drastically. For a Southerner anointed by the Faith of the Seven, the godswood of the North emanate a hostile sylvan agency and represent an uncomfortable and primal wilderness, whereas the ones in the southern regions are beautiful botanical gardens with open space and carefully cultivated patches designed for leisure (cf. the godswood of King’s Landing or Riverrun). Nonetheless, even the godswoods in the south remain spiritual centres for the Stark family. Leaving their ancestral home to be entangled in the game of thrones, the various members of the Stark family find solace and comfort in the forest. Eddard Stark, for example, finds spiritual as well as physical comfort in the gardens of King’s Landing; his oldest son Robb prays to the Old Gods at Riverrun after hearing about the death of his father and his rebellious daughter Arya finds strength and a connection to her family in the godswood at Harrenhall. Even Eddard’s oldest daughter Sansa, who feels out of place in the North and longs for a life in the southern capital with all its romanticised glory,

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finds a way to appreciate the primal forest and the comfort of the Old Gods after her entire life has been shattered into pieces. She starts to appreciate the agential realism of the forest, its smell and wildness and the watchfulness of the Old Gods. Having favoured the gods of her mother and the statues and colourful pictures of the Faith of the Seven, Sansa cannot deny “that the godswood had a certain power too. Especially by night. Help me, she prayed, send me a friend, a true knight to champion me”.3 The contrast between the younger Faith of the Seven, with its religious artefacts and vibrant architecture, and the Old Gods found in nature is evident. The worshipping during masses in stony septs speaks of communal prayers and structured rituals, whereas the faith in the Old Gods is a more private and introversive form of prayer performed outside in nature. For Sansa, the godswood of King’s Landing becomes such a place of silent prayer and a refuge from spying eyes in the busy capital city. Over the course of her imprisonment in King’s Landing, she seeks out the godswood’s comforting silence and the presence of her father’s gods. Consequently, the godswood of King’s Landing, and later that at the Eyrie, is a place where she feels reconnected with her family and can draw strength from the Old Gods. Within the sanctuary of the godswoods, Sansa sheds some of her insecurity and helplessness and takes a step towards a more active character. Building Winterfell out of snow within the Eyrie’s “godswood”—one can hardly call the garden a godswood as “the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering shrubs”4—Sansa takes courage and finally speaks frankly realising that she is “stronger within the walls of Winterfell”.5 Particularly Sansa’s changed perception of and attitude towards the godswoods shows the spiritual but also symbolic value of the sacred sylvan place. The godswood with the weirwoods and heart tree are a signifier of the Old Gods and for the scattered Stark children a connection to their family and their home. As each draws spiritual comfort and strength from the godswoods, they derive power from their environment and thus their interaction with them is an appreciative yet one-sided interaction with the forest world. The worshipping of a sacred tree within a forest/garden in the heart of a capital city is also practiced in the culture of Brooks’s Elves in The Elfstones of Shannara. A structural parallel between Winterfell’s godswood and the Elves’ sacred Gardens of Life can be identified in the places’ general construction within the city as well as the cultures’ overall attitude towards the spirituality of the place. Equivalent to Winterfell’s godswood and its heart tree, the Gardens of Life is located within the Elven capital Arborlon in the Westland of the Four Lands. The garden itself is described as a peaceful oasis for worshipping and contemplation, with the Ellcrys as its spiritual centre

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and protector against evil and a symbol of life and rebirth. However, the parallels between the two places are limited to this cursory examination; they are similar but not the same. The two places differ in their construction and the cultures’ spiritual conviction to the particular place. For once, whereas the godswood is a primal forest of ancient times, the Gardens of Life is a cultivated place with “sculpted hedgerows and flower beds carefully ordered and serene”.6 This difference is already indicated in their individual names, referring to a wood and a garden respectively. The Gardens of Life, created by the Elves of Arborlon, is therefore more in line with the tended and open godswoods of Westeros’ southern regions. Arborlon’s Gardens of Life, in contrast to the numerous godswoods, is a unique place and the Ellcrys a singular tree that has no equal. Its birth additionally stands in clear contrast to the natural weirwoods, as she was brought into being by the magic of the Elves and their allies, to confine the evil within the Forbidding. As the centuries progressed, the ominous threat about the collapsing of the Forbidding has transformed the ancient knowledge into legends and “a tale to frighten children”.7 Instead of being a living border between life and destruction, the Ellcrys has become “a symbol of [their] people’s strength . . . nothing more”.8 Thus, the Elves’ worshipping and tender caring for the ancient tree has become a traditional yet merely symbolic ritual at the beginning of the novel. This ritualistic caring for the Ellcrys is manifested in two associated guilds, the Black Watch and the Chosen Ones, which contrasts the private practices connected to the faith of the Old Gods. The Black Watch is a military unit guarding the Gardens of Life and the Ellcrys within. As majestic sentries, they “stood rigid and aloof as such sentries had stood for centuries gone before the arched, wrought-iron gateway inlaid with silver scroll and ivory chips”.9 However, as the Ellcrys is dying and the Forbidding is weakening in The Elfstones of Shannara, the formerly ceremonial guild becomes the last line of defence against the demons in the War of the Forbidding, who attack the Garden of Life to destroy the Ellcrys and thus the Forbidding. Whereas the Black Watch is military trained, the Chosen Ones are the botanical wardens of the Ellcrys. Each new year, the Ellcrys herself chooses between six and eight young, primarily male, Elves to be her caretakers for one whole year. Only in times of need does the Ellcrys appoint a female Chosen. Same as the Black Watch, the guild of the Chosen Ones is a highly ceremonial and honoured tradition passed down through generation. The great respect and duty associated with the two guilds highlights the centrality and significance of the Gardens of Life and especially the singular Ellcrys for the Elven people. The fall of the Ellcrys’ history into a legendary story and a merely ceremonial tradition suggests a gradual estrangement from the ancient wisdom of the Elves, especially in their capital city, and a disenchantment of nature.

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One of the Chosen Ones remarks on this particular indifference and observes a contrast between the metropolitan people of Arborlon and the more traditional people in rural villages. Therefore, the difference between the Elves of the city and those of smaller villages reveals a conventional division between the cultural and environmental understanding of the urban population and those living in rural and more traditional settings. Nevertheless, whether or not one truly beliefs in the birth and history of the Ellcrys, the Elves within the villages as well as the city live according to their ancient wisdom of interconnectivity and form a hybrid collective. Their central belief and thus their entire life is governed by an understanding of accountability and the obligation to give back, thus, they represent trans-corporeal bodies. Amberle explains this non-hierarchical position of the Elves within their world: You must first understand that the Elven people believe that preservation of the land and all that lives and grows upon it, plant and animal alike, is a moral responsibility. They have always held this belief foremost in their conduct as creatures of the earth. In the old world, they devoted the whole of their lives to caring for the woodlands and forests in which they lived, cultivated its various forms of vegetation, sheltering the animals that it harbored. . . . All that has changed now, but they still maintain a belief in their moral responsibility for their world. Every Elf is expected to spend a portion of his life giving back to the land something of what he has taken out of it. By that I mean that every Elf is expected to devote a part of his life to working with the land.10

A reciprocal relationship with the land is central for the Elven people, a code that is postulated in Aldo Leopold’s concept of a “land ethic.” In his influential study A Sand County Almanac (1949), Leopold asks for a biocentric focus on the preservation of wilderness and appeals for an ethical reasoning and relationship of humans in nature. In this way, “a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members, and also respect for the community as such”.11 The position of the human within the environment is thus renegotiated and placed in a communal correlation, which is also highlighted in Morton’s ecological thought. Brooks’s Elves see themselves in such an ethical and communal relationship with the land and stand therefore in contrast to the Northerners, whose tradition reveals a “power from” approach. Brooks’s Elves are consequently more in line with the spiritual belief and environmental understanding of the sylvan cultures discussed in the previous chapter. Their concept of environmental obligation establishes a “power with” correlation and a reciprocal relationship of taking and giving. This giving is on the one hand accomplished by the ritualistic working with the land, as well as it is realised in Amberle’s ultimate sacrifice by becoming

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the Ellcrys herself. This sacrifice shows the highest devotion to the land and the people. In the above quote, Amberle furthermore alludes to the rich Elven history and their strong connection to the forest world, ever their home. In the times before the Great Wars, the Elves’ ancestors were a sylvan culture living in close interconnection with the forest. With the beginning of the Great Wars, they lived deep in hiding from the increasing human population that altered the lands drastically. Only after a thousand years after the cataclysmic holocaust of the Great Wars did they stand with the new races of Men, Dwarves, Gnomes and Trolls. Keeping their tradition and history alive and continuing to strive for and live by their moral responsibility to the land, they no longer stay impartial but become active agents against the destruction that had led to the Great Wars. Once again, the resemblance to the sylvan cultures is evident, however, due to the holocaust and the changing of the land, the Elves had to adapt to this new world, which led them closer to the race of men, especially due to the loss of their inherent magic. Even though the Elves might have lost the deeper connection to the sylvan world, the forest as such is still a vital place as well as significant concept in their culture, exemplified in the city of Arborlon. The capital is located within the dense forest region of Carolan and thus the forest encircles the place. The forest is simultaneously their provider as well as protector from the outside world. Moreover, the city’s name Arborlon itself hints at the great importance of the forest and the tree for the Elven culture. Their spiritual connection to the singular Ellcrys and the concept of moral responsibility establishes Brooks’s Elves therefore as a spiritual community in close harmony with the land. The belief in the animism of nature and the idea of a balanced relationship with the enclosing forest is furthermore observed in Barron’s Indigenous Halami culture in The Ancient One. The fictive Native American tribe, who disappeared after an initially unknown catastrophe had wiped them out, lived within an encampment by the Blue Lake within the Lost Crater, which is known as Cronon’s Crater in modern times. Transported back into ancient times, Kate meets the young Halami girl Laioni, who brings her to her family. The Halami camp is located in close proximity to the Hidden Forest, which supports the small community. Barron describes a formulaic encampment of a Native American tribe with brush huts and woven objects as well as women preparing food over the fire and men out on the hunt. Consequently, Barron also makes use of the traditional concept of animism and the honouring of the land and its creatures to convey an ecological thought and ecocritical message of a harmonious and respectful approach to nature. The Halamis live in a reciprocal and ecological relationship as they respect the forest and the mythical Tinnanis, becoming one hybrid collective. Furthermore, the Hidden Forest is their most sacred place in which spirits would gather among the

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trees. Once more, the forest and especially the individual tree is the central place for the spiritual world to be treasured and venerated. Kate however does not stay long with the Halamis, consequently, a more in-depth depiction of the Halamis’ belief system and their practices is not given. The reader is merely presented with a conventional belief system attributed to the generic Native American tribe that is to some extent appropriated by Aunt Melanie in modern times for a shift towards an ecological thought. The cultural and spiritual significance of the forest and tree is evident in the analysed examples. The forest as a mythical place is fundamental to the three cultures with specific trees, such as the heart trees, the redwoods and the singular Ellcrys, as the central habitat for the spirits and the Old Gods. Interestingly, the Northerners’ faith in the Old Gods and their worshipping of and in front of the heart trees exposes a more one-sided relationship, as the characters discussed exercise a form of power from the godswood and the heart tree. In contrast, Brooks’s Elves and Barron’s Halamis emphasise a reciprocal relationship, where one gives something back to the land that nourishes them and thus they recognise the sylvan agency. The reason for this difference might be that, although Martin’s Northerners are descendants from the First Men and worship the Old Gods of the children of the forest, they themselves are submerged in a hegemonic world where the faith in the Old Gods only marks one part of their cultural lives. Barron’s Halami and Brooks’s Elves however are still entirely submerged in their cultural and traditional approach towards the forest and land as such. As an Indigenous culture and a mythical people, both are consequently closer to the sylvan cultures in their attitude and relationship to the forest world, only that they do not live directly within the sylvan environment. APPRECIATION OF THE SYLVAN REALM Whereas the forest is understood as a spiritual or religious site by those previously discussed sylvan and Indigenous cultures, nature’s agential realism and the purposive and routine sylvan agency is appreciated by individuals living in an enclave in the forest or on its outskirts as well. In line with a central debate within material ecocriticism, the forest is here primarily understood within its own rights and detached from the idea of nature as a human construct. The binary divide between nature and culture is nullified and the characters understand themselves as trans-corporeal bodies, bodies that are deeply intertwined with the environment. The individual characters do not attach a spiritual, religious or cultural meaning to the forest as a place but see the forest as a natural habitat and an interconnected ecosystem for its flora and fauna to be recognised and respected; although the idea of nature

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as numinous is still communicated. While the autonomy of nature is desired, it does not signify a forest absent of any humans in the speculative fictions. As has been the case in all of the discussed forests, the forests are either dwellings for particular sylvan cultures or a particular area for the focalising characters to go into or travel through. Although the human is consistently a part of the forest world, nature’s autonomy and its thing-power is recognised and a balanced connection to the forest is set as an example for a harmonious relationship with nature. To regard nature as an independent ecosystem and to live in harmony with it is a significant theme in Tolkien’s legendarium, where the behaviour and attitude towards the natural world reveals the characters’ kindness and decency or their moral degradation in contrast. Tolkien utilises the entire spectrum of manners towards the sylvan world to impart a shift away from a solely anthropocentric perspective to a recognition and appreciation of the natural world and an ecological thought. In a previous chapters, the significance of Bombadil as a mediator between the sylvan world and the intruding characters as well as the reader has been commented on. In whatever ways you might analyse the character of Bombadil, as a nature god12 or an environmental mediator, his perspective on nature indisputably provides a shift towards an environmental awareness and appreciation. Bombadil is introduced by his wife Goldberry as the master of the natural environment, nevertheless, this mastery cannot be equated with the destructive power over relationship discussed previously but represents an autonomy of the individual as well as nature where everything belongs to themselves. Consequently, Bombadil represents and advocates an approach of non-appropriation of nature. As already discussed, educating the hobbits, and the reader, on the autonomy of nature and the forest’s own identity is a crucial element of Bombadil’s character. Understanding the intricate environment of a forest and living in harmony with it is a central topic in the speculative narratives discussed. In Eragon (2002), Paolini’s first book of the Inheritance Cycle, the young Eragon demonstrates this respectful and considerate understanding of the sylvan world and the recognition of its agential realism. Living in the small agrarian village Carvahall in the Palancar-Valley, Eragon is one of few who dares to venture into the adjacent forest of the Spine, the mountain range that runs along Alagaësia’s eastern region, to hunt for game. The Spine is a natural wilderness independent from any human jurisdiction as it is “one of the only places that King Galbatorix could not call his own. Stories were still told about how half his army disappeared after marching into its ancient forest”.13 As those rumours and legends circulate amongst the inhabitants of the valley affecting their approach to the forest, Eragon recognises the forest’s peculiarities and adapts to the conditions of this environment by training his senses and sharpening his reflexes. By being vigilant and wary of the forest

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world, Eragon understands himself as an outsider in the ancient mountain forest. What is more, he does not want to dominate the forest world by rearranging it to his convenience, for example by cutting trees to have easier passage through the forest, but uses the natural game trail. In this way, Eragon adjusts to the laws of the sylvan world and recognises it as an autonomous world. This respectful approach to the sylvan realm can furthermore be recognised in the reminiscences about the forester Zach and the brief encounter with an extended family who settled near a lake in Ireland in Shaw’s The Trees. The group’s initial destination is Zach’s lodge within the New Forest region, supposed to be their safehouse. Hannah’s older brother had always been interested in the intricate network of the forest’s flora and fauna and its organic agency, thus becoming a forester and living within the woodlands. By being build attuned to the natural surroundings of the forest and being almost self-sufficient, Zach’s lodge hints at a once picturesque scenery and a harmonious relationship with the environment; even though the place is affected by the new trees as well. However, Zach’s description as the “giant, meditative Zach, . . . who had the frame of a wrestler but the thoughtfulness of a hermit [and who] could have been an alpha male in most any company”14 stems from his little sister Hannah who always admired and looked up to her older brother. It is primarily her recollection of her brother—as he has already been killed by the time they arrive at the lodge—that provides the rest of the group, and particularly the reader, with a highly romanticised and idealised picture of the caring forester. This is in tune with Hannah’s overall attitude and behaviour towards nature and the forest in the beginning of the narrative. As already mentioned, Shaw’s small group comes across a family unit of twenty-one who built a new home in the virgin forest in Ireland living in a balanced relationship with the forest.15 Not much is revealed about their actual housing situation, however, as Shaw consistently highlights the felling of trees and thus destruction of nature in his novel, the fact that no logged trees or any further kind of maltreatment against nature is mentioned in this episode suggests an encampment in conformity with the natural surroundings. In addition, instead of simply exploiting the resources provided by the forest and the lake, the family cultivates a snail farm to not overfish in the lake and so ensure their food resources for the future. Consequently, the family represents the most harmonious and environmentally friendly correlation with the natural world and thus a great form of hybrid collective the group encounters on their way through England and Ireland. Both approaches to the forest world, Eragon’s hunt in the Spine and the family’s small settlement, reveal an appreciation of nature’s agential realism of the autonomous environment and a purposive organic agent that needs to be respected. The forest is a vital provider of resources for the characters, especially food, yet they keep the environment stable by procuring only

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what they really need to survive. This reveals a significant difference to the destructive use of the forest resources mentioned in the previous chapter on the maltreatment of the forest. In the case of Eragon and the Irish family, a respectful approach towards the forest world as a provider can be identified by them not abusing the forest as a plain commodity. In this way, they recognise the complex network of the forest world and keep the balance of the interconnected environment in mind. Thus, an environmental-friendly approach towards the forest world is demonstrated with a shift away from an anthropocentric worldview and a recognition of one’s own position within the (sylvan) environment. ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM The previous recognition of one’s own position in the wider context of the (sylvan) environment, in addition to an understanding of the particular environmental consequences that arise from an anthropocentric worldview, is a central concern within the Capitalocene and is overtly discussed in Shaw’s The Trees and Barron’s The Ancient One. Whereas Shaw provides the audience with an eco-friendly and enthusiastic approach to the virgin forest world with the character of Hannah, particularly in the beginning of the novel and set in clear contrast to Adrien’s initial sceptical and haunted attitude towards the new forest, Barron’s Kate and her Aunt Melanie actively work against the deforestation of the ancient redwoods in the form of environmental activism. First, Shaw’s Hannah represents a classical nature-loving character who seems to be in tune with nature and unconditionally in favour of this new afforested world. Hannah’s love for the forest had been established during her childhood when the forest had become a place of adventure where she could roam freely with her beloved brother Zach. Recollecting that last summer holiday as a family (her mother would be murdered that winter) in the cottage surrounded by a forest, she associates the sylvan world with a sanctuary in which she can be free and feel content. To her, the transformative and therapeutic agency of the forest is connected to her nostalgic memory of her childhood. She maintains this positive and emotional connection to the forest throughout her childhood and into her adulthood. Her favourite early morning routine includes having a peaceful and quite tea at her garden table carved from an elm tree while observing the natural world around her. Through these routines in her garden, Hannah situates herself directly in nature. It is precisely in such a moment that the trees arrive and Hannah becomes a witness to the accelerated transformative sylvan agency and the, in her words, “magic of its sudden appearance”.16 After the initial shock and knowing that her son Seb is safe, Hannah feels “more awestruck than

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terrified. It was a more reverent kind of fear, one she had felt only a few times in her life”.17 Hannah associates the virgin forest with the sublimity found in classical wilderness and expresses an unwavering positivity about the new situation and the opportunity the virgin forest brings with it. Consequently, she perceives the virgin forest as a beautiful apocalypse. Hannah is indisputably the environmentalist of the group who considers the arrival of the virgin forest as hope for the future of the capitalistic world. In her efforts to convert the cynical and anxious Adrien as well as her technophile son Seb to appreciate the restart of nature and the consequential renewed relationship with the environment, Hannah exuberantly states pithy messages of nature’s response to its abuse by humans. For her, the appearance of the virgin forest is a “restart [and] all we have to do is make the best of it”.18 It is “a blessing in disguise”19 and nature’s “answer . . . to all the things going wrong”.20 After repeatedly coming across destroyed cornerstones of modern civilisation, Hannah acknowledges it as a corollary of the dire need for a change in attitude towards the environment. The overt link to the environmental issues of the Capitalocene is more than evident in Shaw’s novel. The arrival of the virgin forest is a direct address of messages from nature, such as global warming, massive extinctions of flora and fauna, or higher frequencies of wildfires (cf. wildfires on the West Coast of Canada and the United States in 2021 and 2023) and great floods experienced in Germany in July 2021 for example. Particularly in the beginning of the narrative, Hannah adopts the language of environmentalists and scientists to stress nature’s agential realism and thing-power in addition to highlighting our own position as trans-corporeal bodies within the wider issues of environmental change. Thus, Hannah addresses the urgency of a re-evaluation of the environment and human’s effect on it. As valuable as the ecological thought and ecocritical messages she voices are, Hannah’s initial behaviour and attitude within this beautiful apocalypse can also be seen critically. Her overjoyed reaction to the arrival of the virgin forest, paired with the idealisation and romanticising of her brother Zach discussed before, attach negative connotations to her environmental position and her unwavering optimism that this new situation is an improvement. Initially, Hannah only perceives the beautiful site to it, a seemingly healthy nature, without truly regarding the damage and destruction the trees brought with them. Wandering joyfully through the virgin forest on those first days, Hannah is a striking contrast to the distraught Adrien and the rest of the passers-by and her delighted laughs “seemed the strangest sound beneath the whispered friction of leaves. Coarse, almost vulgar, to laugh in the face of the smashed world. She was laughing at a town house whose walls the trees had carefully unshuttered”.21 It has to be recognised that the characterisation and description of Hannah in this incident derives from the focalisation of

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her most contrastive character Adrien, one who initially states that “Mother Nature is a psychopath”22, and thus has to be treated with caution as well. The agitated and nature critic brands Hannah in their first meeting as a “crazy hippy”.23 Thus, it becomes clear that Shaw presents his reader with conventional polar opposites in the beginning of his novel to provide controversial, yet predictable, discussions between an environmentalist (Hannah) and a critic who did not concern himself with the issues of climate crisis (Adrien). Hannah only gradually recognises the damaging effects of the apocalyptic episode when directly confronted with the deaths of people she knows. The first time Hannah realises the danger they are in is after they discover the mangled body of Hannah’s former colleague at the nursery, making her re-evaluate her own behaviour, especially towards those suffering from the apocalyptic event. Her feeling of guilt however is soon diminished through the enchanted forest at night and her encounter with the magical creatures of the virgin forest. It is ultimately a personal trauma, the death of her brother and the confrontation with his killer, which triggers a loss in faith in the forest and in herself for a time. Although Hannah does regain her devotion to the forest, especially the numinous and enchanted forest world with its magical kirin, she does not regain faith in humanity and in people doing what is right; especially when realising that humanity seemingly did not learn from past mistakes and cannot establish a communal relationship with the forest. Hannah’s critical behaviour in the beginning of the novel and her bleak outlook on the future towards the end might dampen her environmental message from the beginning of the novel; nevertheless, the ecocritical message is in itself strong and potent to be able to educate the reader on environmental issues of our times. Barron takes up these issues of environmental crisis and introduces in his novel two characters who participate in environmental activism by trying to save an ancient redwood grove from deforestation. In The Ancient One’s frame narrative, Kate and especially her Aunt Melanie represent modern environmental warriors. Living in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of the fictional town Blade in Oregon, Melanie surrounds herself directly with the natural world promoting a balanced and considerate approach to the environment. Melanie embodies an outdoor-character who feels most content within her own garden and the surrounding forest. The wooden plaque on her front porch, citing a passage of Lord Byron’s epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812– 1818), already hints at her deep appreciation of nature’s agential realism and its wildness detached from human interference: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes

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By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.24

These lines clearly characterise Melanie as she takes great delight in her hikes through the densely forested region of Oregon and positions herself as an advocate for nature against the local loggers. Although recognising the difficult economic situation of the local mill industry and sympathising with its workers, Melanie stands firmly against a widespread deforestation and an intrusion into the ancient redwood grove in the Lost Crater. By filing for an injunction, she obtains a court order forbidding anyone to enter the crater until the decision is made whether or not to turn the grove into a park. Melanie thus becomes a mediator for a healthy nature and an activist by positioning herself between the loggers and the forest ecology. In her conversation with the logger Frank, Melanie addresses humanity’s appropriation of nature and the problematic over-deforestation without taking into consideration the fatal effects this practice might have for the entire environment. She reveals Alaimo’s trans-corporeality by recognising human’s interconnection with the environment which forces us to facilitate an environmental and ethical thinking in which the binary and hierarchical gulf between culture and nature has to be deconstructed. Melanie thus encourages people to consider the forest’s organic agency and its worth as an independent and vital ecosystem and not as a sheer commodity to be utilised and discarded. What is more, Melanie highlights the remarkableness of the redwoods by addressing their incredible age and attaching a religious and spiritual significance to them as God’s first temple. Consequently, Melanie not only emphasises the trees’ significance for the entire environment as a provider of clear oxygen, of habitat for countless flora and fauna and a valuable help for combating diseases, she also highlights their value as a monument for the magnitude of nature. The possible logging of the ancient redwoods in the Lost Crater is appalling as they are considered the oldest untouched redwoods ever found in the northern regions in the narrative. With this, Barron links his novel closely to the plight of the coastal redwoods found in the northern regions of the United States, so that Melanie additionally becomes a fictional environmental activist for coastal redwoods of the reader’s primary world as well. Already diminished in their numbers, the protection of the ancient redwoods—in the primary world of the reader as well as the world of Barron’s narrative fiction—is of central concern in The Ancient One. Melanie initially tries to engage the loggers in conversation and, after this fails and the court order does not deter the loggers from entering the crater, Melanie and Kate attempt to stop the loggers by becoming a living shield for the ancient redwoods. Although the protagonists and the reader experience a great sense of loss due to the felling of the Ancient One, the “afterword” of the novel propitiates. A

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year after the conflict, Kate comes back to Blade to find the Hidden Forest turned into the preservation area Cronon’s Crater Park and thus protected from further deforestation. Although preserved from further damage, the ancient wilderness has now become a tourist attraction with “a newly completed trait that started at the hole blasted one year ago in the wall of the crater, descended over the rocky slope and through the swamp, then wound its way deep into the Hidden Forest. Not so hidden anymore, Kate reflected, thinking of the large asphalt parking lot where Trusty sat next to a dozen other cars.”25 Consequently, the former wilderness is converted into a “post natural wilderness reserve”26; a phenomenon in the Capitalocene where the concept of the once untouched primal wilderness is abandoned and replaced by the acknowledgement that the human presence can be found everywhere. Nevertheless, the forest world, as a primal wilderness or national park, is still a vital ecosystem for flora and fauna and a valuable component for the environment at large. Barron, himself an environmentalist and conservationist, appeals for a preservation and conversation of wilderness areas and thus considers the message of The Ancient One as highly significant: In today’s hyper-connected, materialistic, noisy world we need time in nature more than ever. For only in wild places, can we still experience silence. We can hear voices apart from our own, sounds not made by automobiles or chainsaws or electronic media. We can even hear, sometimes, the ongoing whispers of creation—that remarkable process whose essence is life, and whose engine is silent. We have the opportunity to learn that nature can be a wonderful friend. A brilliant teacher. A powerful healer. And a great inspiration. My greatest hope is that The Ancient One will give people a good, enjoyable read—and also remind them of those magical qualities of nature.27

Melanie and Kate depict exactly this attitude towards the natural world in the novel, representing Barron’s idea of conservation by trying to protect the ancient redwood grove from deforestation. As the maltreatment of the forest due to excessive deforestation is unmistakeably criticised and condemned in the depiction of the characters’ subjugation of nature and the well-balanced and reciprocal relationship between the forest and the sylvan cultures is portrayed as one of the past, the harmonious interaction with the environment and the appreciation of nature’s agential realism seems to be a conceivable solution to the issues concerning the ecological crisis in the Capitalocene. As a clear contrast to the corrupted domination of the forest for the immoral benefit of large industrial corporations or military strategies, the recognition of the significance of a healthy and balanced ecosystem, in which humans represent only one part—but unfortunately a rather

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interfering one—is of central concern here. The individual characters in this final chapter thus represent models of environmentalists who altogether value the forest’s and ultimately nature’s agency apart from their instrumental utility and thus stimulate an ecological thought, eco-sylvan awareness and re-evaluation of nature as a vital ecosystem. Furthermore, they foster a reconsideration of one’s own position within the environment by recognising the intra-active becoming of nature and human’s trans-corporeal body deeply intermeshed in the environment. The characters’ language and understanding of the forest speak of a numinous ecosystem that is animated and interrelated so that a re-enchantment of the world is realised in these cases. The concept of animation and interrelatedness are significant for establishing an understanding of the intricate networks within the ecosystem and highlight the interconnectivity of all things. Supporting the idea of interconnectivity and recognising their overall position within their world, the characters living in harmony with their surrounding forest world thus promote a moral responsibility, which is one of the, maybe even the, most significant ecocritical message in the era of the Capitalocene postulated in the analysed narratives. The discussed characters, maybe except Martin’s Northerners, believe that it is their obligation and duty to help preserve the forest and the environment at large; Brooks’s Elves making this accountability even a part of their general upbringing. In line with Leopold’s land ethic, the characters therefore recognise their general role in the interconnected environment and move away from an anthropocentric perspective to an eco-sylvan perspective where the human is part of a wider environmental community. Particularly within the Capitalocene, the identification of humanity’s negative impact—as especially commented on in Shaw’s apocalyptic fantasy narrative and Barron’s environmental fantasy novel—and an acknowledgment of human’s moral responsibility for a healthy ecosystem is of greatest significance. As the world of the sylvan cultures is dwindling and under attack, it is up to the human characters to re-enchant the world and to protect the environment. Tolkien’s Gandalf delegates the leadership and responsibility to the new king Aragorn towards the end of The Lord of the Rings and states that the world is men’s concern now: “This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what may be preserved”.28 As humans have drastically changed the environment, it is time to step forward and start preserving and protecting the world; as witnessed by Barron’s Kate and Melanie, or Tolkien’s Sam when planting the trees in the Shire. In order to, at least halt, the damaging effect the prevailing climate crisis imposes on the environment, we have to start the Doctor’s “Cass Project: Save the Earth”.29

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NOTES 1. George R. R. Martin et al., The World of Ice and Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2014), 147. 2. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 22. 3. George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 283. 4. Martin, Game, 434. 5. George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 1104. 6. Terry Brooks, The Elfstones of Shannara (New York: Del Rey Books, 2015), 540. 7. Brooks, Elfstones, 3. 8. Brooks, Elfstones, 3. 9. Brooks, Elfstones, 1. 10. Brooks, Elfstones, 128–29. 11. Aldo Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 204. 12. Douglas A. Burger, “The Shire: A Tolkien Version of Pastoral,” in Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, ed. William Coyle (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 1986), 152. 13. Christopher Paolini, Eragon (London: Corgi Books, 2002), 9. 14. Ali Shaw, The Trees (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 113. 15. Shaw, Trees, 297–99. 16. Shaw, Trees, 41. 17. Shaw, Trees, 17. 18. Shaw, Trees, 49. 19. Shaw, Trees, 33. 20. Shaw, Trees, 34. 21. Shaw, Trees, 27. 22. Shaw, Trees, 37. 23. Shaw, Trees, 25. 24. Lord George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold Pilgrimage, Project Gutenberg, accessed December 16, 2022, https:​//​www​.gutenberg​.org​/files​/5131​/5131​-h​/5131​-h​ .htm. Canto 4, CLXXVIII, ll. 178–82. 25. T. A. Barron, The Ancient One (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2004), 302. 26. Rebecca Raglon, “The Post Natural Wilderness & Its Writers,” Journal of Eco-Criticism, no. 1 (November 2009): 61. 27. EMA, “A Fantastic Life of Creativity and Compassion: EMA Interviews Author and Conservationist T. A. Barron,” EMA, April 14, 2016, https:​//​www​.green4ema​.org​/ newsletters​/ema​-earth​-month​-special​-newsletter​-part​-1. 28. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 302. 29. Doctor Who, “In the Forest of the Night,” BBC One, 45:03, October 25, 2014, https:​//​www​.amazon​.de​/gp​/video​/detail​/B00N29UGUU​/ref​=atv​_dp​_share​_cu​ _r. 38:12.

Conclusion

THE FORESTS OF THE WORLD Coming back to the beginning of this book and Jim Robbins’s appeal for a recognition and acknowledgment of the significance of the sylvan environment, this study of the forests and trees of speculative worlds enables us to acquire a deeper understanding and appreciation for the forest and thus facilitates an ecological thought and eco-sylvan awareness. The speculative fictions analysed in this book create a non-mimetic world in which the environment is a central and often distinctively performing part of the narrative and so effortlessly shift away from an anthropocentric towards an environmental and specifically sylvan perspective. Forests hold a vital position within our cultural histories and consciousness and are highly valuable for a healthy environment. As metonymies for Earth as a whole, the forests’ various fictional representations within the speculative worlds provide a wealth of opportunities for analysing the ecocritical significance and sylvan agency of the ecosystems and the individual arboreal characters in the uncertain future the Anthropocene holds. This book has proven it worthwhile to do so. In this book, I recognised the forming of an eco-sylvan awareness in four aspects of the fictional forests and individual trees of speculative fictions: The forest as a sylvan (antagonistic) wilderness and therapeutic sanctuary, the individual tree as a multifaceted cultural and ecocritical emblem, the forest and tree as sylvan/arboreal voices and agents of nature, as well as the interrelationship between the characters and their sylvan realms. Material ecocriticism with its relevant formulation of nature’s agential realism (Barad) and thing-power (Bennett) provides a valuable approach to the present study of a sylvan and arboreal agency and the interrelationship between human characters and the environment. In particular, Stacy Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporality established the imperative connectivity between the human body and the environment by concentrating on humans’ obligation towards the environment, as well as its construction of a material agency. At the same 183

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time, the awareness that all matter has some form of agency is essential so that the formerly inherently anthropocentric concept of agency is broadened to include material objects and nature as well. For the sylvan realm and its arboreal matter, the organic agency translates to the tree’s routine, transformative, purposive and (non-)reflexive actions, as identified by Owain Jones and Paul Cloke. I expanded those four acts of sylvan and arboreal agency in this book to include an intra-/interrelational sylvan/arboreal agency as well as a sylvan/arboreal agency on a physical and psychological level, comprised of a hostile and therapeutic sylvan/arboreal agency. By approaching the speculative worlds and their sylvan realms with a new eco-sylvan alertness and considering the sylvan and arboreal agency, I recognise the ecocritical study of speculative fiction as a form of environmental advocacy that raises ecocritical questions and facilitates an ecocritical, and particularly an eco-sylvan, awareness in the current environmental crisis of the Capitalocene. The analysis of the sylvan environment reveals the forest’s complex and often paradoxical concept (primarily the forest as a dangerous wilderness and a restoring sanctuary or secluded refuge) and their respective sylvan agency as a vital component in creating an eco-sylvan awareness. The most prototypical forest motif and thus most classical representation of the forest is realised in its sylvan antagonistic wilderness, the forest as a locus terribilis. The speculative fictions deploy this classical depiction frequently and present the primal sylvan wilderness as a dark and dangerous forest in which the intruding (human) characters encounter antagonists and predators and get repeatedly lost within the sylvan realm. Thus, its sylvan agency is initially one of hostile intent. This hostile sylvan agency has its strongest effect on the psychological level where it reveals an ominous presence that terrifies and haunts the characters, even into a state of panic, and the forest becomes a place of nightmare. Tolkien’s Mirkwood, Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood and Shaw’s virgin forest are prime examples where the characters lose their sense of direction and become more and more agitated. Although the sylvan wilderness is often presented as antagonistic in the beginning, a shift in understanding the forest is shown the longer the characters linger in the sylvan worlds. Even initially frightening and apparently dangerous forests ultimately reveal their alluring natural wilderness and agential realism by displaying a healthy and uncultivated forest ecology, such as Tolkien’s Old Forest and Fangorn. The sylvan wilderness of Cameron’s Pandora, Paolini’s sylvan mountain region of the Spine and Barron’s forested Oregon is marked by the forest’s natural beauty and prosperity and accomplished through their creative and purposive sylvan agency. Therefore, the speculative fiction raises an eco-sylvan awareness in their representation of a natural healthy sylvan ecosystem with its entire flora and fauna in equilibrium.

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The notion of a healthy forest leads over to the concept of a therapeutic sylvan agency identified in the forests as sanctuaries and refuges. As a contrasting concept, the therapeutic forests are in this case locus amoenus, places of tranquillity and restoration for mind and body. Thus, the significance of the forests for mental and physical health is approached effectively, promoting a recognition of the beneficial effect of the sylvan realm. Once and again, the forest displays its therapeutic agency and provides a soothing place for the weary travellers to rest and heal. All four forests of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Old Forest, Fangorn, Lothlórien and the forest of Ithilien, present such sanctuaries for the fellowship and a place to recover during their journeys. As places for silent contemplation, the godswoods of Martin’s Westeros and Brooks’s Gardens of Life offer a restorative and stimulating atmosphere. Read especially in the light of the COVID-19 crisis where forest-walks have become a significant activity to deal with (mental) stress, the recognition of the therapeutic agency of the forest in the speculative fiction stimulates a healthy interaction with the sylvan realm. While analysing the sylvan realms, one significant aspect became apparent to me: Most fictional forests present a lost memory of either a vast sylvan wilderness, an ancient culture or a lost paradise. Particularly, the nostalgic memory of a once vast sylvan wilderness is significant for increasing an eco-sylvan awareness, as it mirrors the dire state of our real world forests. The fictional primal forests are predominantly depicted as sylvan time capsules, as removed remnants of a once vast and interconnected sylvan wilderness that stretched across a seemingly limitless terrain (Barron’s Hidden Forest, Tolkien’s forests, and Martin’s ancient forests). The loss of this ancient wilderness is highly lamented in the narratives, where patches of sylvan wilderness evoke an environmental nostalgia and (arboreal) characters mourn the dwindled forests. As I argue, the emotional retrospection reveals a decline of the sylvan environment and exposes ecocritical questions concerning deforestation and the regression of natural wildernesses. In addition to the ecocritical component, the forests are considered cultural time capsules and documentary authorities of cultural life. Martin’s godswoods and especially Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood are natural places of cultural memory because of the sylvan interrelational agency with their respective cultures. In relation to cultural history and in contrast to an ecocritical memory, Arcadian forests present a sylvan memory of a lost paradise, with Tolkien’s Lothlórien representing this picturesque and sublime forest reminiscent of an elder time effectively. Connected to the ancient realm of the Valar, Lothlórien emits a highly emotional image of a vanished world and a feeling of loss that goes beyond the remembrance of Valinor to reveal the dwindling of Lothlórien itself. Thus, although a strong therapeutic forest, the Arcadian forests radiate an aura of sadness, similarly experienced in the vanishing of the sylvan wilderness.

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By presenting the forests as sylvan islands in a changing world and so lost memories, the speculative fictions foster an eco-sylvan awareness and an understanding of its overall endangerment, especially through excessive deforestation. Whereas the various depictions of the forests foster an ecocritical awareness of the sylvan realm, the individual tree and its multifaceted symbols and emblems additionally reveal an arboreal centrality within cultures and expose its emblematic significance for the environment. The individual tree has significance on a cultural and spiritual level, being identified as a marker of place, as a monument of time and (cultural) history, as well as a centre of mythology. Holding a singular position among the floral kingdom within human history and culture, I set the individual tree in an interrelational position with their respective cultures and places. The boundary between these classifications is often blurred and the individual symbolic identities of the tree are merged, which shows the complexity of the tree’s position within culture. This is once again best exemplified in the lineage of Tolkien’s Telperion, which is simultaneously a marker of Gondor, a monument to the history of Valinor and the Númenorean as well as the mythological centre of the Valar. In order to expose an eco-arboreal, and in extension eco-sylvan, awareness and a critical comment on the current environmental crisis, I classified the violated tree as an emblem for human’s mistreatment of nature. Sharp criticism against human’s negative behaviour towards the environment is effectively conveyed through a highly emotionalised and poignant portrayal of dead trees, such as the withered tree in Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 and Tolkien’s decayed White Tree of Gondor. While the dead trees evoke a gloomy picture of an ecological degradation, the active process of felling individual trees, especially Barron’s Ancient One and Cameron’s Home Tree, as well as discarded trees expose a more disturbing indifference towards the living tree and highlights the antagonistic characters’ excessive anthropocentric view. Directly contrasting this violation of nature, the sprouting sapling is a symbol of hope and an inviting prospect for an environmental future. The young trees, Tolkien’s arboreal replacements for the White Tree of Gondor and the Party Tree as well as Barron’s redwood sapling, represent a victory over the subjugation of nature by bringing to light nature’s endurance and strength and recognising the arboreal agency in all its forms. By concluding their novels with this positive image, Barron and Tolkien highlight the significance of the individual tree and promote an eco-arboreal awareness and delight in the living tree itself. The analysis of first the distinct sylvan and arboreal voice, as well as its mediation and silencing, and second the sylvan and arboreal non-human agency reveals the empowering quality of defamiliarization in speculative fiction and the facilitation of an ecocritical paradigm shift. I classified the

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sentient arboreal characters into three categories, ranging from the most common tree to a highly animated, and therefore also anthropomorphised, tree. Brooks’s Ellcrys, Tolkien’s Old Man Willow and Paolini’s Menoa Tree are prime examples of rooted proactive ‘common’ trees, falling into the first category. Second, Pocahontas’ Grandmother Willow and Zelda’s Great Deku Tree are classified as rooted proactive trees with facial animation and, finally, Tolkien’s beloved Ents and Huorns as well as Lewis’s Dryads are categorised as mobile proactive trees. In this way, the speculative fiction confronts an anthropocentric idea of a silent nature and introduces a voiced nature in form of sentient proactive arboreal-characters. Having identified the problem of an anthropocentric language and anthropomorphic features, I do consider all sentient tree characters arboreal speakers for nature as they provide the most direct and immediate eco-arboreal/eco-sylvan perspective. As environmental educators for the various characters and audience, they offer the most potent ecocritical request for a healthy sylvan ecosystem and an eco-sylvan awareness. In addition to the sentient tree characters, speculative fiction includes human characters, such as Cameron’s Omaticaya clan, Le Guin’s Selver and Raj Lyubov and Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil. Affiliated with their sylvan realms, those characters become mediators between the forest and outside characters. Those intermediate characters especially emphasise the significance of the sylvan ecosystem and frequently address the characters directly by commenting on their negative interferences with the forest. Nevertheless, the silencing of nature is, once again, the most shocking and severe comment on environmental degradation. The active silencing of arboreal voices by cutting the tree, clearly shown in the death of Lewis’s Dryads and the excessive deforestation of Lewis’s Lantern Waste, Tolkien’s Fangorn Forest and Barron’s ancient redwood forest, exacerbates a feeling of loss and anxiety. This feeling of loss creates an intense notion of empathy for the violated sylvan ecosystem. Moreover, the deforested areas with their eerie stillness are recurrently equated to battlefields and wastelands. As a response to such a derogatory anthropocentricism, speculative fiction equips their sylvan realm and arboreal characters with a distinct form of agency to oppose the maltreatment of nature. I identify the gradual rise of arboreal agency in three stages: a) forests reclaiming ancient space, b) pro-active forests and trees reacting towards intrusion, and c) mobile forests and trees marching to war. On the most natural level, the powerful image of nature reclaiming ancient space establishes the transformative agency of natural forests by showing their resilience and strength to renaturalize abandoned places, such as Lewis’s Cair Paraval and Jefferies’s England. Whereas this is a natural process, Shaw’s and Doctor Who’s (beautiful) sylvan apocalypse accelerate the transformative agency to establish the forest’s therapeutic

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effect on an endangered environment more immediately. The next two stages show the transition from a natural to a non-human agency, identified as subjectivity, (self-) reflectiveness, intentionality, and forethought. Due to being rooted proactive trees, forests and their individual sentient tree characters display the four aspects of non-human agency in their reactions towards intrusion and abuse on a local and more private level. Expanding their reach beyond their sylvan realm, Tolkien’s and Lewis’s mobile proactive tree characters vigorously act on behalf of the environment and march into battle against the subjugation of nature. Tolkien’s Ents and Lewis’s Awakened Trees are thus the most powerful, but also most anthropomorphic, form of arboreal and sylvan non-human agency. As could be seen, the sylvan environment and its arboreal characters do not exist in a sylvan vacuum and apart from any human interaction, consequently Part II provides a closer examination of the interaction and relationship between the human characters and their respective forests, with a focus on the characters’ positions towards the sylvan realm, as discussed in material ecocriticism. To evaluate how the various relationships raise ecocritical questions and foster an ecological thought and eco-sylvan awareness, the characters’ interaction has been divided into three groups according to their understanding of the forest: a) the forest as a commodity and antagonist, b) the forest as a human habitat and c) the (environmental) significance of the forest. Negative performances against the forest display a power over relationship and are analysed in the first group. On the one hand, the forest is seen as a feared primal wilderness set in contrast to civilisation and, thus, opposed to create structure and order within. Lewis’s Telmarines and the humans in the Doctor Who episode, but also the nature-loving hobbits of Tolkien’s legendarium, try to cultivate and conquer the apparently antagonistic sylvan wilderness. However, the understanding of the forest as a sheer commodity and the tree as an inanimated product is the most violent ecocritical issue in the speculative fiction. The major antagonistic characters in this group—Tolkien’s Saruman, Paolini’s Galbatorix, Le Guin’s Captain Davidson and Cameron’s Colonel Quaritch and Selfridge—execute an arrogant and greedy dominion over the environment and fully subjugate nature and people, therefore, revealing an oppressive anthropocentric (male) hierarchy. This hegemonic attitude is highly criticised within the speculative fiction and moralised as it underlines the danger of appropriation and a utilitarian view. With their repeatedly hyperbolic depiction of deforestation, the narratives fiercely condemn the maltreatment of nature and provide an overt commentary on the environmental issues of the Anthropocene. In contrast to this highly problematic dominion over nature, the sylvan cultures in the second category live in a non-hierarchical and reciprocal relationship with their respective forests and thus exhibit topophilia, a love

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for (sylvan) place. The mythical—Tolkien’s and Paolini’s Elves, Martin’s children of the forest and Barron’s Tinnani—as well as the Indigenous sylvan cultures—Le Guin’s Athsheans and Cameron’s Omaticaya—are intricately linked to their forest, as it is their home and central part of their cultures and histories, thus, form a hybrid collective with the sylvan environment. Consequently, an emotional and spiritual bond to and respect of the sylvan realm is ubiquitous, where both parties, the sylvan culture and the forest, relate to and are defined by each other. With those sylvan cultures and their approach to the forest, the speculative fiction presents a highly animistic forest and a harmonious and communal relationship with it. However, the mythological sylvan cultures represent a dwindling philosophy and the Indigenous sylvan cultures are under violent attack. Therefore, the sylvan cultures and their specific animistic approach to the forest as a dwelling place seem to belong to a lost world. To complete my investigation of the relationship with and attitude towards the forest, I investigated the third group of characters, who live in a respectful relationship with their sylvan environment. Whereas the subjugation of nature is identified as a problem and the reciprocal relationship of sylvan cultures recognised as one of a dwindling past, the appreciative and eco-friendly approach of characters in tune with nature is determined as a conceivable solution for the issues within the Capitalocene. By drawing on Aldo Leopold’s concept of a land ethic, eco-friendly and sylvan-friendly characters of the speculative fictions—Brooks’s Elves, Paolini’s Eragon, Shaw’s Hannah and particularly Barron’s Kate and Melanie—provide an acknowledgment of the various forms of sylvan agency and an understanding of human’s accountability and obligation to preserve and conserve the sylvan world. Consequently, this final category presents an overt and direct ecocritical message to re-evaluate one’s own position within the environment and raises an eco-sylvan, and in extension an overall ecocritical, awareness. The distinctly environmentalist characters Hannah, Kate and Melanie contribute to the prevalent environmental discussions by promoting a moral responsibility for the environment and ask their audience to start the “Class Project: Save the Earth”.1 To conclude, I have analysed the shift from an anthropocentric to an eco-/ sylvan-centric perspective by placing the forest in a central and active position in the speculative narratives and, so, recognised the establishment of an eco-sylvan awareness. The speculative fictions addressed in this book revealed a consideration of the sylvan environment and addressed environmental issues, on the one hand, overtly as their narratives’ focus. In the other cases, the sylvan topic and ecocritical issues are covertly discussed so that they can be recognised as environmental but not environmentalist narratives.

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ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENVIRONMENTALIST NARRATIVES Table created and provided by author. Environmental Narratives

Environmentalist Narratives

Richard Jefferies After London Or, Wild England (1885) J. R. R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) J. R. R. Tolkien The Fellowship of the Rings (1954) J. R. R. Tolkien The Return of the King (1955) C. S. Lewis The Magician’s Nephew (1955) J. R. R. Tolkien The Silmarillion (1979) Ursula K. Le Guin “Vaster than Empires and More Slow” (1988) Disney Pocahontas (1995) George R. R. Martin A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–2011) J. K. Rowling Harry Potter Series (1997–2007) Christopher Paolini Inheritance Cycle (2002–2011) Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) Neil Gaiman American Gods (2004) Robert Holdstock Mythago Wood (2014) Rob Blackwell The Forest of Forever (2015) Terry Brooks The Elfstones of Shannara (2015) Naomi Novik Uprooted (2015)

C. S. Lewis Prince Caspian (1951) J. R. R. Tolkien The Two Towers (1954) C. S. Lewis The Last Battle (1956) Dr Seuss The Lorax (1971) Ursula K. Le Guin The Word for World Is Forest (1991) T. A. Barron The Ancient One (2004) James Cameron Avatar (2010) Orson Scott Card The Speaker of the Dead (2013) Doctor Who “In the Forest of the Night” (2014) Zelda “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (2014) Ali Shaw The Trees (2016) Denis Villeneuve Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Even though a majority of the addressed speculative fiction is classified as environmental narrative, it has been shown that the underlying eco-sylvan message is nevertheless highly potent in these narratives as they reveal on the one hand a reciprocal and healthy relationship with the sylvan environment and contrastingly criticise an excessive abuse of nature. Still, environmentalist texts, such as Barron’s The Ancient One and Shaw’s The Trees, address environmental issues up front and so provide the most direct confrontation with and discussion of the current environmental crisis. Overall, the ecocritical reading has shown that the promotion of an eco-sylvan awareness is most effectively established by recognising and presenting a sylvan and arboreal agency, in either the depiction of the common forest/tree (especially its physical and psychological agency) or the sentient tree characters who become active and potent voices and agents for the environment. I identify this latter as the strongest element of agency employed

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and a great advantage of speculative fiction, because it presents the most advanced shift towards an eco-sylvan perspective and fosters a strong empathy with the sylvan realm. Of course, there is a risk of criticising the field of speculative fiction, with its defamiliarization of organic nature and creation of exaggerated speculative scenarios (Shaw’s The Trees in particular), as too far removed from the primary world concerns and thus non-applicable for discussions on the prevailing environmental crisis. However, this defamiliarization, the creation of walking and talking tree characters for example, and the remoteness of the speculative world is an enormous benefit in reshaping the perceptions of the environment. I find this to be valid: The speculative fictions raise an eco-sylvan awareness by exposing the violent and excessive exploitation of the sylvan ecosystem, through highly condemned and villainised deforestation, holding a mirror up to the issues and negative effects of excessive deforestation and reduction of vital forests in the Capitalocene. As a result, the speculative narratives are shown to postulate a reconsideration of human’s presence in the world by recognising one’s accountability and responsibility to preserve the forest as a vital ecosystem for Earth as a whole. The characters and the audience begin “to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed, to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things [are] at home”.2 NOTES 1. Doctor Who, “In the Forest of the Night,” BBC One, 45:03, October 25, 2014, https:​//​www​.amazon​.de​/gp​/video​/detail​/B00N29UGUU​/ref​=atv​_dp​_share​_cu​_r.” 38:12 2. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Rings (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981), 178–79.

Glossary of Selected Terms

Anthropocene: current geological epoch in which humanity’s negative impact on the environment is considered largely responsible for the current climate crisis Deep ecology: ecological and environmental philosophy that positions the environment with its natural habitat as well as animal kingdom at the centre of valuation and challenges the anthropocentric idea that the natural world is valuable simply as resource for humanity Eco-sylvan awareness*: the fostering of a consideration and understanding of the, especially, ecological significance of the forest and its distinct sylvan (and arboreal) agency in the current environmental crisis through literary texts Environmental nostalgia: the sentimentality for an environmental past and the mourning of the loss of an ancient (sylvan) wilderness Hostile sylvan agency*: physical as well as psychological threat the sylvan realm poses to a (human) trespasser; thus, the primal and dense forest exhibits a hostile sylvan agency on a physical as well as psychological level by revealing an unstructured and disorienting wilderness filled with predators that can additionally affect the human psyche Intra- and interrelational sylvan agency*: the relational connection and interaction within the forest’s own ecosystem, where trees clustered together form a complex interconnected system and different symbiosis are found (intra-relational), as well as the relation and interaction with further networks and agents outside the forest ecology (interrelational) Locus amoenus: an idealised place of comfort and safety, where a character can find shelter Locus terribilis: the inversion of an idealised place of comfort and safety to become itself a place of danger and menace Material ecocriticism: position within ecocriticism which reconsiders materiality as a central element of ecological relationships and challenges the prevalent notion of agency as an inherently human concept attributing agency to the material world (‘material turn’) Sylvan/arboreal agency*: the material agency of the forest as well as individual trees, detected in routine, transformative, purposive and (non-)reflexive actions as well

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Glossary of Selected Terms

as on an inter- and intra-relational and physical/psychological level with a hostile and therapeutic sylvan agency (see glossary) Therapeutic sylvan agency*: the positive qualities of the sylvan realm, such as offering fresh and clean air in a tranquil environment, which provide a restorative and beneficial effect for the body and mind *: terms introduced by the author of this book

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Index

Page references for figures are italicized activism: environmental, 11, 21, 49, 99, 117, 149, 176–81, 186, 188 afforestation, 92,118–23, 187–88 agency: arboreal, 5, 21, 23–24, 29, 31–35, 38, 51, 54, 80–94, 98–100, 126–27, 132, 133–37, 143, 147, 161, 171, 184, 186–88, 193–98; hostile sylvan, 23, 26–27, 31–33, 36–38, 41–49, 51–59, 62, 66, 76–77, 111, 123, 130, 133–34, 152–55, 158–59, 162–64, 177–78, 184, 188, 194; inter- and intra-relational sylvan, 25–26, 50–52, 82–83, 88–89, 98, 100, 107, 137, 157–65, 169–82, 184, 188–89; material, 7–9, 15–21, 27–31, 33–34, 37–38, 44, 49, 51, 83, 85–87, 100, 130, 147–49, 183, 193–94; nonhuman, 18–19, 30, 34–35, 116–18, 126–27, 130–38, 196, 198; purposive sylvan, 23–24, 173–81, 184; (non) reflexive sylvan, 24–25, 118, 184, 187–88; routine sylvan, 22, 173–81, 184; therapeutic sylvan, 23, 27–28, 36–38, 43, 46–48, 50–58, 60, 63–64, 66–70, 74–75, 97,102–03, 111, 119, 131, 149, 162, 168, 172, 176–78, 184–88, 193–95, 204; transformative

sylvan, 22–23, 118–23, 132, 153–54, 176–77, 184, 187–88; agential realism, 5–6, 44, 47–49, 52–58,73, 120, 138, 142, 146, 151, 158, 162, 164, 168–69, 173–75, 177–81, 183–84 Ancient One, 77–78, 88–89, 92–93, 132, 150, 179–80, 186. See Barron animism, 8, 12, 62, 79, 80–82, 88, 98–99, 100–01, 111–12, 114, 116, 121, 130–31, 147, 153–54, 159–61, 163, 165, 167, 172 antagonist, sylvan, 10, 14, 27–33, 43–5, 48, 52, 56, 66, 100, 109, 123–24, 137–38, 143, 145–55, 158, 183– 84, 188 anthropocentricism, 99, 105, 115, 141–51, 187 anthropomorphism, 101–02, 105–06, 118, 124–26, 186 Athshean, 108–09, 161–62, 164–65, 187. See Le Guin Awakened Trees, 130–31, 132, 188. See Lewis awareness, eco-sylvan, 1, 3, 13–14, 28, 39, 41, 56, 59, 69, 88, 98, 102, 110, 115–16, 133, 137–39, 173–81, 183–91, 93

203

204

Index

Barron, Thomas A.: The Ancient One, 51, 58–60, 82, 92–93, 108, 114–15, 132, 150–51, 160, 164–65, 172–23, 176, 178–80, 184–89, 190; Halami, 60, 150, 172–73; Tinnani, 82, 108, 150–51, 160, 164–65, 172 Baum, Frank L., The Wizard of Oz, 123, 132 Blackwell, Rob, The Forest of Forever, 44, 190 Brooks, Terry: Arborlon, 169–70; Elfstones of Shannara, 53, 79–80, 100–01, 132, 169–72, 185, 187, 190; Gardens of Life, 53, 169–70, 185 Cameron, James: Avatar, 68–69, 81–82, 90, 107, 145–48, 162–65, 184, 186–88, 190; Home Tree, 90, 147–48, 162, 186; Na`vi, 68–69, 81, 90, 107, 146–48, 162–65, 187; Tree of Souls, 81–82, 148, 163; Tree of Voice, 81–82 Capitaloscene, 1–4, 7–9, 12, 14–15, 19, 41, 59–60, 69, 86–90, 93, 107, 111–16, 119, 122, 138–39, 141–51, 176–81, 184, 189, 191, 200 Card, Orson Scott, Speaker of the Dead, 99, 105–06, 132, 190 Clarke, Susanna, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, 123, 132, 190 culture: Indigenous sylvan, 68–69, 81, 90, 101, 107–11, 146–51, 157–65, 189; mythological sylvan, 107–111, 167–73, 189 deforestation, 2, 9–10, 13, 58–59, 89, 92–93, 107–09, 111–14, 141–55, 176–80, 185–88, 191, 197–98. See also maltreatment Doctor Who, “The Forest of the Night,” 44, 120–21, 131, 132, 152–54, 181, 187–88, 190 Dr Seuss, The Lorax, 106–07, 190 dryad, 102–03, 111–13, 130–31, 132, 149–50, 187–88. See Lewis

Du Weldenvarden, 113–14, 144–45, 151, 158–60; Ellesméra, 159–60. See Paolini ecocriticism, material, 4–9, 15, 17–18, 21, 27, 39, 41, 120, 137, 173, 183, 193, 198 Ellcrys, 53, 79–80, 100–01, 132, 169– 72, 187. See Brooks Elves: Brook’s, 79–80, 100–01, 145, 169–72, 189; Paolini’s, 113–14, 158–60, 164–65, 189. See Paolini; Tolkien’s, 57, 64–67, 84–86, 157–58, 164–65, 189. See Tolkien Ents, 50, 60, 102–05, 112, 127–29, 131, 132, 187–88: Entmoot, 113, 127–28; Treebeard, 50, 60, 102–05, 112, 127, 132. See Tolkien Fangorn Forest, 49–50, 56, 60, 102–04, 112–13, 127–29, 131, 132, 143–44, 157, 184, 187. See Tolkien Forbidden Forest, 45. See Rowling Gaia Hypothesis, 18, 38, 163, 199 Gaiman, Neil, American Gods, 83, 190 Garden of Life, 67–68. See Lewis. See also Brooks, Gardens of Life. godswood: heart tree, 78–79, 83–84, 167; northern, 52–54, 61–63, 154, 167–68; southern, 53–56, 168–69; weirwoods, 78–79, 83–84, 107, 154, 161; of Winterfell, 53–54, 61–63, 168. See Martin Grandmother Willow, 101, 125–26, 132, 187, 190 Great Deku Tree, 102, 132, 187, 190 Groot, 105, 132 Harrison, Robert, 34, 36, 38, 59–62 Hidden Forest, 59–60, 92–93, 172–73, 179–80, 187. See Barron Holdstock, Robert, Mythago Woods, 46–47, 51, 63–41, 184, 190

Index

hybrid collectif, 19, 137, 161–65, 168–73 industrialisation, 88, 90, 92, 104, 111, 113, 128–51 Ithilien, 56–58, 185. See Tolkien Jefferies, Richard, After London, 120, 132, 187, 190 land ethic, 171, 181, 189 language: animistic, 97–98, 105, 163–64; anthropomorphic, 39n20, 102–05, 163–64 Lantern Waste, 111–13, 148–50, 187. See Lewis Le Guin, Ursula K.: “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow,” 47–48, 124, 190; The Word for World is Forest, 47, 68–69, 108–09, 145, 161–62, 164–65, 187–88, 190 Lewis, C. S.: The Last Battle, 111–13, 132, 148–50, 190; The Magician’s Nephew, 67–68, 190; Prince Caspian, 102, 112, 119, 130–31, 132, 153, 190 locus: amoenus, 13, 33, 53–58, 185, 193; terribilis, 13, 26, 33, 43–52, 184, 193 Lórien, 64, 66, 158. See Tolkien Lothlórien, 56–58, 60, 64–67, 93–94, 154–55, 157–58, 185: Caras Galadhon, 67, 158, 159; Cerin Amroth, 57, 65. See Tolkien maltreatment, 74, 86–90, 93, 104, 106, 111–13, 121–22, 124, 127–29, 131, 134, 141–55, 149–55, 175–76, 180, 186–88 Martin, George R. R.: A Clash of Kings, 54, 63, 168–69, 190; A Dance with Dragons, 62–63, 78–79, 83–84, 107–08, 160–61, 190; A Game of Thrones, 52–54, 61–62, 167, 190;

205

House Stark, 53–54, 168–69; A Storm of Swords, 54–56, 168, 190 Menoa tree, 80–81, 99–100, 125–26, 131, 132, 159, 187. See Paolini Mirkwood, 48, 60, 66–67, 157, 184. See Tolkien Novak, Naomi, Uprooted, 123, 132, 190 numinous, 11, 124, 139, 150, 155, 165, 167, 174, 178, 181, 196 Old Forest, 48–50, 56–57, 60, 109–10, 123–25, 127, 131, 153–54, 157, 174, 184–85. See Tolkien Old Gods, 54, 61–62, 79, 154, 161, 167–70, 173: children of the forest, 107–08, 154, 160–61, 164–65, 167; greenseer, 79, 83–84. See Martin Old Man Willow, 48–49, 109–10, 124–25, 131, 132, 154–55, 187. See Tolkien paganism, 79, 154, 160, 167 Paolini, Christopher: Brisingr, 99–100, 125–26, 132, 144–45, 151, 190; Eldest, 80–81, 99, 132, 158–60, 190; Eragon, 51, 174–75, 184, 190 Party Tree, 76, 88–91, 144, 186. See Tolkien power: from, 169, 171, 173; over, 138, 141–55, 164, 188; thing-, 8–9, 46–47, 57, 75, 174, 178, 183; with, 138, 157–65, 171–72 Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 45, 190; Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 45, 190; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 126–27, 132, 190 Ryhope Wood. See Holdstock sanctuary, sylvan, 11, 30, 33–36, 53–58, 65, 169, 176, 183–84 selva antica 36, 53, 58

206

Index

Shaw, Ali, The Trees, 46, 51–52, 68, 114, 121–23, 131, 132, 151, 154, 175–78, 184, 187–89, 190 Stoker, Bram, Dracula, 43 thought: ecological, 18, 41, 50, 59, 61, 66, 76, 106–07, 109–10. 114, 128, 137, 158, 164, 171–78, 181, 183, 188, 200 Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Fellowship of the Ring, 45–48, 60–61, 64–67, 75–76, 93–94, 103–04, 109–10, 123–25, 132, 153–54, 157–58, 174, 190; The Hobbit, 45, 66–67, 190; The Return of the King, 56–58, 75–76, 85, 87–92, 105, 132, 144, 181, 190; The Silmarillion, 64–67, 84–86, 141–42, 157, 190; The Two Towers, 49–50, 56–58, 60–61, 74–75, 102–04, 112– 13, 127–30, 132, 142–44, 151, 190 trans-corporeality, 6–7, 15, 137–38, 171, 179, 181, 183, 195 tree: common, 73–76, 78–79, 83–93, 107, 126–27 142, 144, 147–48, 150, 154, 161–62, 179–80 186; mobile proactive, 50, 60, 102–05, 111–13, 127–31, 132, 149–50, 187–88; rooted proactive animated, 48–49, 101–02,

109–10, 124–26, 131, 154–55, 187; rooted proactive common, 74–75, 80–81, 84–86, 98–101, 131, 132, 159, 187; sentient, 53, 79–82, 100– 01, 124–27, 148, 163, 169–70, 187 The Two Towers: Jackson, 110, 112– 13, 143 Villeneuve, Denis, Blade Runner 2049, 86–88, 91, 186, 190 voice: arboreal, 13, 41, 97–106, 132, 183, 186–97; silenced, 86–90, 111– 16, 141–55, 187 White Tree, 74–75, 84–88, 91, 142, 186; of Gondor, 74–75, 85–88, 91, 186; sapling of the, 91; Two Trees of Valinor, 74–75, 84–86. See Tolkien Whomping Willow, 126–27, 132. See Rowling wilderness: sylvan, 5, 10–11, 13–14, 16, 21, 26–33, 36, 39, 41, 43–63, 66–69, 79, 89, 119, 120, 124, 139, 152–55, 160, 168, 170–71, 174, 180, 182–85, 188, 193, 200, 202 Yggdrasil, 83–84

About the Author

Britta Maria Colligs (Dr. Ph., University of Trier) is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of British literature and culture at the University of Trier. In 2022, she completed a PhD thesis investigating sylvan and arboreal agency and the representation of forests in speculative fiction. She is currently developing a postdoctoral project in Indigenous narrative studies, focusing on identity and ecocritical awareness.

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