Fortellinger om bærekraftig utvikling

The curriculum renewal integrates the topic of sustainable development into the curriculum for the Norwegian subject, and thus underlines the importance of language and literature for the teaching of sustainability. This chapter therefore introduces environmental humanities and especially ecocritical research on the relation between language, literature and sustainability, and discusses how education for sustainable development can be incorporated into the teaching of literature.

‘Sustainable development’ and education for sustainable development have received an increased interest over the recent years, and should be understood with reference to political context. The chapter examines the semantic plurality of this term as used in parliamentary debates, and finds that it can express both degrowth and status quo perspectives. ‘Sustainable development’ may usefully be supplemented by perspectives from ecocriticism, as well as other, more critical perspectives on environmental issues.

This chapter focuses on philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Arne Næss and Peter Wessel Zapffe, who all are relevant in the approach of the theme of sustainable development. The chapter has therefore an historical theoretical perspective. Global solidarity, also for future generations, is pointed out as central in relation to the curriculum’s formulations about sustainable development. Through an analys of «Solaris korrigert» (Solaris corrected), it is made explicit how the poem is an example of how literature may be used as a point of departure for the work with sustainable development in school.

The chapter explores how different views on sustainability interact with the parent–child motif in Maja Lunde’s climate change novels. It is argued that The History of Bees (2017) The End of the Ocean (2019) and Przewalski’s Horse (English translation forthcoming) perform several fictional disputes illustrating the dilemmas and complexities of the UN sustainability agenda. It is also addressed how fictional dialogues may inspire and enlighten actual discussions in the classroom.

The article presents an ecocritical reading of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, seeing the play as a reflection upon modern man’s objectivizing view of his environment. Replacing symbol with synecdoche as the reading’s central term allows for an interpretation that sees the forest, the loft, and indeed the wild duck itself as synecdochical representatives of a nature harmed by human activities, and revenging itself upon man, as indicated by Ekdal’s second act prophecy: «The forests avenge themselves.»

In this chapter, we turn our attention to the youngest readers in school, where many children experience important encounters with the world of stories, picture books, and reading aloud. With nature-oriented literature studies as a theoretical backdrop (e.g. Garrard, 2012), we investigate whether the various representations of nature in a selection of picture books can provide space for exploratory conversations about children’s relationships with the environment and the nature that surround them. Theoretical contributions from e.g. Joseph Appleyard and Martha Nussbaum also play an important role in our investigation. The purpose of the chapter is to show how picture books, along with conversations about these books, can invite young readers to enjoy nature and increase an awareness of sustainable development.

The present study deals with how aspects related to ecological sustainability are affected as the American novel, Vicki finds the Answer (1947) by Helen Wells is translated into Norwegian and Swedish. Results show that the Swedish translation is considerably shorter than the source text and the Norwegian target text and it seems as if passages dealing with the environment are omitted or shortened in the Swedish target text. The Norwegian translator has chosen to stay much closer to the source text.

The chapter focuses on Simon Strangers’ young adult novel Verdensredderne (‘The Saviors of the World’) and shows how the novel contains elements suitable for engaging with the topic of sustainable development. A specific attention is devoted to the novel’s rendering of the uneven distribution of resources and its integration of animals in the story. At the same time, the analysis makes some of the specific characteristics, as literature for young adults, explicit. Drawing on theories such as affective narratology, theory on cosmopolitanism and ecocritisism, ecocosmopolitan empathy is suggested as a concept, and the chapter shows how this is expressed in the literature. Finally, the curriculum in relation to the meeting across generations is discussed.