Landscape Metaphysics: Narrative Architecture and the Focalisation of the Environment

In this article I situate the concept of landscape at the crossroads of narrative theory and ecocriticism. In particular, I argue that landscape description has an ekphrastic status in narrative that goes beyond simply setting the scene within which a story plays out. Instead, I suggest that landscape denotes the peculiar way in which narrative description focalises the mere fact of setting into a total context of meaninga virtual world organised around a particular subject. I thus argue that landscape description may play a more complex role in a narrative than narrative scholars and ecocritics currently recognise, as the former tend to subordinate spatial concerns to temporal ones, whereas the latter tend to extol the virtues of place-based description rather than belabour the limits of representation.