“At the Speed of Trees”: Richard Powers’ The Overstory

Abstract

This essay applies Riane Eisler’s biocultural partnership-dominator model as a relevant testimony of how transdisciplinary approaches to literature can broaden our critical scope, methodology and understanding when examining different types of texts. This comprehensive methodology for the study of literature draws upon different fields of knowledge and scientific investigation, such as quantum physics, biology and systemic science, ecosophy, ecoliteracy and contemporary studies on plant life. With the aim of rekindling the fundamental relationship between humans and nature, Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory (2018) is analysed as a powerful denunciation of the current dominator, destructive, violent world-view pervading our planet. If the Earth and its inhabitants are portrayed as being controlled and exploited, the novel also unmistakably reinforces the fundamental values of the partnership cultural paradigm, which focuses on the caring potential of human love and reciprocity.

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-171

Keywords: Richard Powers, The Overstory, biocultural partnership model, systemic science, plant life, myth, ecoliteracy.

Bibliography

Benozzo, Francesco. 2021. Memorie di un filologo complottista. Lucca: La Vela.

Buell, Lawrence. 1995. The Environmental Imagination. Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Capra, Fritjof. 1982. The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture. Simon & Schuster: Bantam.

Capra, Fritjof. 1997. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor.

Capra, Fritjof & Pierluigi Luisi. 2016. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Capra, Fritjof & Stefano Mancuso. 2019. Discorso sulle erbe. Dalla botanica di Leonardo alle reti vegetali. Sansepolcro: Aboca.

Cattabiani, Alfredo. 1996. Florario. Miti, leggende e simboli di fiori e piante. Milano: Mondadori.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1983. Coleridge Poetical Works. Ernest Hartley Coleridge ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eisler, Riane. 1987. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Eisler, Riane. 1995. Sacred Pleasure, Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body: New Paths to Power and Love. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Eisler, Riane & Douglas P. Fry. 2019. Nurturing Our Humanity. How Domination and Partnership Shape our Brains, Lives, and Futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gagliano, Monica et al. 2017. The Language of Plants. Science, Philosophy, Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gagliano, Monica. 2018. Thus Spoke the Plant. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Garrard, Greg. 2004. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge.

Glotfelty, Cheryll & Harold Fromm eds. 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Hageneder, Fred. 2019. The Living Wisdom of Trees. A Guide to the Natural History, Symbolism and Healing Power of Trees. London: Watkins.

Hess, M. Linda. 2019. The Aesthetic of Wonder: Networks of the Grievable in  Richard Powers’ The Overstory. REAL, (Dec) 35: 189-206.

Hopkins, Gerald Manley. 1992. Dalle foglie della Sibilla. Poesie e prose 1863-1888. Viola Papetti (a cura di). Milano: Rizzoli.

Lovelock, James Ephraim. 1972. Gaia as seen through the atmosphere. Atmospheric Environment, 6 [8]: 579-580.

Lovelock, James Ephraim & Lynn Margulis. 1974. Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the Gaia hypothesis. Tellus, Series A. Stockholm: International Meteorological Institute 26 [1-2]: 2-10.

Mancuso, Stefano. 2017a. Plant Revolution. Firenze: Giunti.

Mancuso, Stefano. 2017b. Botanica. Viaggio nell’universo vegetale. Sansepolcro: Aboca.

Mancuso, Stefano. 2018. L’incredibile viaggio delle piante. Bari: Laterza.

Mancuso, Stefano. 2019. La nazione delle piante. Bari: Laterza.

McSkimming, Helen. 1992. The Trees of the Celtic Alphabet. Brodrick-Isle of Arran: Clan Dalriada Publications.

Neidjie, Bill. 1989. Story About Feeling. Keith Taylor ed. Broome: Magabala Books.

Panikkar, Raimon. 1994. Ecosofia. Para una espiritualidad de la Tierra. Madrid: San Pablo.

Pelissero, Alberto. 2004. Le Filosofie classiche dell’India. Brescia: Morcelliana.

Phan, Peter C. & Young-Chan Ro eds. 2018. Raimon Panikkar: A Companion to his Life and Thought. Cambridge: James & Clarke.

Powers, Richard. 2018. The Overstory. New York: Norton.

Riem, Antonella. 2005. The One Life. Coleridge and Hinduism. Jaipur: Rawat.

Riem, Antonella, 2020. Gerald Manley Hopkins’s Ecosophical Lament. Lingue e Linguaggi, 36: 255-265.

Sjöö, Monica & Barbara Mor. 1991. The Great Cosmic Mother. Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

Taraglio, Riccardo. 1997. Il vischio e la quercia. Spiritualità celtica nell’Europa druidica. Grignasco (NO): Edizioni Età dell’Acquario.

Tyrrell, Toby. 2013. On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wohlleben, Peter. 2016. The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How they Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World [Jane Billinghurst trans., foreword by Tim Flannery]. Vancouver-Berkeley: Greystone Books.

Wilkinson, David M. 2006. Fundamental Processes in Ecology: An Earth Systems Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zutshi, Vikram & Fritjof Capra. 2018. Belonging to the Universe: Fritjof Capra in Conversation. Fair Observer (Apr 15), https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/fritjof-capra-new-physics-science-ecology-spirituality-conversation-news-65192/ (consulted on 5/05/2020).

Webliography

Capra, Fritjof, https://www.fritjofcapra.net/books/ (consulted on 1/03/2020).

Mancuso, Stefano, International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, http://www.linv.org/ (1/05/2020).

Neidjie, Bill, https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/572859 (consulted on 9/03/2021).

Panikkar, Raimon, http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-ecosofi.html (consulted on 9/03/2021).

Panikkar, Raimon, https://www.avvenire.it/agora/pagine/ecosofia-teilhard-a-panikkar (9/03/2021).

Partnership Studies Group (PSG) Udine University, http://all.uniud.it/?page_id=195, http://www.antonellariem.it/partnership-studies-group-2/ (consulted on 9/03/2021).

https://forestry.ubc.ca/faculty-profile/suzanne-simard/ (consulted on 19/04/2021).

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19525043/ (consulted on 7/03/2021).

https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech/ (consulted on 23/04/2021).

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190701-why-plants-survived-chernobyls-deadly-radiation (consulted on 9/03/2021).

https://www.britannica.com/event/Stanford-Prison-Experiment (consulted on 22/04/2021).

http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/seattle.htmconsulted25/4/2021 (consulted on 23/04/2021).

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/ (consulted on 7/03/2021).

https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other (consulted on 19/4/2021).

http://www.zuckermann.org/ (consulted on 19/04/2020).