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<p>This article engages critical Indigenous theories of Story and memory to examine interconnected histories of other-than-human representation. To better understand how we arrived in a present where old animism seems new and the natural world needs legal representation, we foreground the Te Urewera Act of 2014, which granted legal personhood to the Te Urewera rainforest. We explore the colonial conditions necessitating such recognition of other-than-human sovereignty and then read backward into medieval representations of nature in literary and material culture. Focusing on the dual meanings of representation—artistic mimesis and legal advocacy—the article investigates early medieval English arboreal representations, including Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s <i>Poetria nova</i> and the Bayeux Embroidery, to trace colonial ideologies embedded in depictions of trees. At the core of this approach is the premise that representing nature is not just a mimetic activity but a political one, and an imperative to foreground the ways in which poets, artists, and other ‘representers’ think about the governance of society with, through, and against ‘nature.’ This Indigenous-informed perspective reiterates the importance of medieval/modern dialogue in the climate crisis of the twenty-first century.</p>

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Representing nature

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月30日

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  • Tarren Andrews,
  • Emma Hitchcock

摘要

This article engages critical Indigenous theories of Story and memory to examine interconnected histories of other-than-human representation. To better understand how we arrived in a present where old animism seems new and the natural world needs legal representation, we foreground the Te Urewera Act of 2014, which granted legal personhood to the Te Urewera rainforest. We explore the colonial conditions necessitating such recognition of other-than-human sovereignty and then read backward into medieval representations of nature in literary and material culture. Focusing on the dual meanings of representation—artistic mimesis and legal advocacy—the article investigates early medieval English arboreal representations, including Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova and the Bayeux Embroidery, to trace colonial ideologies embedded in depictions of trees. At the core of this approach is the premise that representing nature is not just a mimetic activity but a political one, and an imperative to foreground the ways in which poets, artists, and other ‘representers’ think about the governance of society with, through, and against ‘nature.’ This Indigenous-informed perspective reiterates the importance of medieval/modern dialogue in the climate crisis of the twenty-first century.