III.HEALINGPLANET,SPECIES, ANDSELF Why We Care about (Non)fictional Places: Empathy, Character, and Narrative Environment Alexa Weik von Mossner University of Klagenfurt Abstract Cognitive ecocriticism draws on research in neuroscience and cognitive nar- ratology to explore how literary reading can lead us to care about natural environ- ments. Ann Pancake’s novel Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007) serves as an example of a novel that cues both direct and empathetic emotions for an actual environment — the Appalachian Mountains — that is wounded and scarred. I argue that the novel’s protagonists allow readers to imaginatively experience what it is like to love an environ- ment and then witness its destruction by mountaintop removal mining. Pancake’s decision to relate large parts of the story through the consciousness of teenagers allows for highly emotional perspectives that have the potential to engage readers in the social and moral issues around resource extraction. Keywords cognitive ecocriticism, empathy, emotion, embodied simulation, character When fifteen-year-old Bant Turrell follows her father beyond a “No Tres- passing” sign in the Appalachian Mountains, she catches her breath. Con- fronted with the sight of “Yellowroot Mountain blasted to bits,” the teenage protagonist of Ann Pancake’s novel Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007) is shaken by bouts of horror and disgust as she stares at the “pure mountain guts” that have been exposed by mountaintop removal mining (Pancake 2007: 20). The “strange rocks” seem to push Bant physically away, and she Poetics Today 40:3 (September 2019) DOI 10.1215/03335372-7558150 q 2019 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-pdf/40/3/559/690729/0400559.pdf by UNIV NC GREENSBORO user on 08 June 2020