Ecocritical perspectives:
Reconciling the Two Cultures in Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations
Abstract
The divide between the humanities and the natural sciences is often seen, still nowadays, through the lens of the famous “two cultures” controversy surrounding C. P. Snow’s 1959 lecture. The purpose of this paper is to reconsider this much debated question in the light of the emerging field of ecocriticism, which is devoted to understanding and explaining the literary representation of the relationships between human beings and the natural environment. From this standpoint, Charlotte McConaghy’s debut novel, Migrations (2020), may be considered as an exemplary case of eco-narrative and, more specifically, of climate fiction. The analysis aims at showing how this narrative text is able to embody the core values and specific conditions of the human and physical worlds. The main purpose of this study is to underline how the ecocritical perspective, through genre hybridization and blending, helps bridge the gap between natural sciences and humanities.
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References
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