Provocations of Tree Ring Narratives: Dendronarratology, Transmaterial Narratology, and the Ecology of Narratives

This essay represents an evolving conversation between a dendrochronologist or tree ring scientist and a narrative theorist. Our project of applied narratology uses narrative theory to read tree rings—a rich example of texts featuring what we call material narrativity in their clear representation of a sequence of events in their annual accumulation—and illustrates the practical and social significance of contemporary narratological scholarship. Alternating between our voices, we (1) introduce a case study of narrative featuring material narrativity, (2) place the tree ring narrative within a narratological context, (3) produce a revised interpretation of this narrative and a second case study using narratological concepts, and (4) explain what pressures such narratives might exert on contemporary narrative scholarship and dendrochronological practices. Our back-and-forth discussion ultimately advocates for and highlights the potentials of a narratologically-infused form of tree ring sciences, or what we playfully call dendronarratology . We also pitch two expansions to a narratological lexicon that dendronarratology provokes: an expansion of transmedial narratology to include material-specific narratological resources (in addition to media-specific ones) and a more capacious understanding of authorship in light of our recognition of trees as experiencing—and authoring—agents. Thus, we argue for a greater call for narrative scholars to delve deeper into the ecology of narratives.