Ecological Storytelling

Nanson, Anthony ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6501-2745 (2026) Ecological Storytelling. In: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ecolinguistics. Bloomsbury Handbooks . Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781350497207 (In Press)

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the contemporary application of oral storytelling to people’s relations with ecology. Defining a “story” as a perceived sequence of causally related events, the chapter examines how embodied in-person storytelling can support the direct sensory awareness and empathetic responsivity that are essential to changes in motivation productive of changes in behavior with respect to ecological needs. Storytelling can sustain a dialectic between inner change and the social negotiation of beliefs and values because the experience takes you inwards in your imagination and simultaneously connects you outwards to a community of others in a physical environment. A model is presented whereby the dialogic experience of storytelling and applied storywork can facilitate emergent transformative cognition among listeners and storywork participants by providing “structures of space” charged with “patterns of desire” pertaining to the particular themes and subject matter of the stories told. The chapter advocates the use of a maximal diversity of oral stories and genres, via both innovation and evolving tradition, to engage diverse aspects of the education of desire demanded by the ongoing ecological crisis. Perceiving this crisis to require a catalyst of change able to transcend the determinism implied by materialist assumptions, it also argues that the sharing of mythic stories offers a way of engaging collectively with enchanted spaces of transcendent and transpersonal consciousness that can inspire compassion, wisdom, and hope in the face of overwhelming ecological realities and today’s technologically mediated barrage of egocentric delusion.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	Chapter 23
Uncontrolled Keywords:	storytelling; oral storytelling; story; storywork; ecology; ecological crisis; dialogic; desire; responsivity; mythic stories
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Arts, Culture and Environment
Depositing User:	Anne Pengelly
Date Deposited:	14 Sep 2026 12:00
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2026 12:00
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/16516

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