Ecocriticism

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Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the natural environment. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in 1996: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell.

Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad genre that is known by many names: green cultural studies, ecopoetics, and environmental literary criticism are also popular monikers for this relatively new branch of literary criticism.

Contents

[edit] Ecocriticism as a branch of literary criticism

Ecocritics ask questions such as: What is the role of the landscape in this work? Are the underlying values of the text ecologically sound? What is nature writing? Indeed, what is meant by the word nature? Should the examination of place be a distinctive category, much like class, gender and race? What is our perception of wilderness, and how has this perception varied throughout history? Are current environmental issues accurately represented or even mentioned in our popular culture and in modern literature? Can the principles of ecology be applied to poetry? Does gender affect the way one perceives and writes about nature? How do corporations, U.S. government officials, advertising executives, and the charismatic hosts of televised nature shows differ in their perceptions, reactions and approaches to their respective views of nature? What can other disciplines—such as history, philosophy, ethics, and psychology—contribute?

William Rueckert may have been the first person to use the term ecocriticism. In 1978, Rueckert published an essay titled “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism.” His intent was to focus on “the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature.” (Reprinted in The Ecocritism Reader on p.107)

Ecologically minded individuals and scholars have been publishing progressive works of ecotheory and criticism since the 1970s. However, because there was no organized movement to study the “greener” side of literature, these important works were scattered and categorized under a litany of different subject headings: pastoralism, human ecology, regionalism, American Studies, and so on. Without a designated field of study, many integral essays and books (such as Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology, published in 1972) were obscured by circumstance.

As Glotfelty noted in The Ecocriticism Reader, “One indication of the disunity of the early efforts is that these critics rarely cited one another’s work; they didn’t know that it existed…Each was a single voice howling in the wilderness.” (p.xvii)

In the mid-eighties, scholars began to work collectively to establish ecocritism as a genre. In 1990, at the University of Nevada in Reno, Glotfelty became the first person to hold an academic position as a professor of Literature and the Environment.

[edit] Ecocriticism in the 21st Century

[edit] Defining Ecocriticism

Exactly what constitutes ecocriticism has been something of a point of contention. Glotfelty's working definition in The Ecocriticism Reader is that "ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment" (xviii), and one of the implicit goals of the approach is to recoup professional dignity for what Glotfelty calls the "undervalued genre of nature writing" (xxxi). Lawrence Buell defines “‘ecocriticism’ . . . as [a] study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis” (430, n.20).

In a 1999 contribution to the PMLA, Simon C. Estok asks “What goals and definitions . . . do we envision for ecocriticism? What counts as ecocriticism?” (“Letter”, 1096). Estok notes in 2001 that “ecocriticism has distinguished itself, debates notwithstanding, firstly by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the natural world as an important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic study, and, secondly, by its commitment to making connections” (“A Report Card on Ecocriticism” 220).

More recently, in an article that extends ecocriticism to Shakespearean studies, Estok argues that ecocriticism is more than “simply the study of Nature or natural things in literature; rather, it is any theory that is committed to effecting change by analyzing the function–thematic, artistic, social, historical, ideological, theoretical, or otherwise–of the natural environment, or aspects of it, represented in documents (literary or other) that contribute to material practices in material worlds” (“Shakespeare and Ecocriticism” 16-17).

As Michael P. Cohen has observed, “if you want to be an ecocritic, be prepared to explain what you do and be criticized, if not satirized.” Certainly, Cohen adds his voice to such critique, noting that one of the problems of ecocriticism has been what he calls its “praise-song school” of criticism. The most ferocious critique of ecocriticism can be found in The Truth of Ecology, written by Dana Phillips. In response to what ecocriticism is or should be, Camilo Gomides has offered an operational definition that is both broad and discriminating: "The field of enquiry that analyzes and promotes works of art which raise moral questions about human interactions with nature, while also motivating audiences to live within a limit that will be binding over generations" (16) He tests it for a film (mal)adaptation about Amazonian deforestation. Implementing the Gomides definition, Joseph Henry Vogel makes the case that ecocriticism constitutes an "economic school of thought" as it engages audiences to debate issues of resource allocation that have no technical solution.

[edit] Discourse in Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), which hosts biennial meetings for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. ASLE has an official journal—Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)—in which the most current scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can often be found.

[edit] References

  • Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.
  • Cohen, Michael P. “Blues in Green: Ecocriticism Under Critique.” Environmental History 9. 1 (January 2004): 9-36.
  • Estok, Simon C. (2001). “A Report Card on Ecocriticism.” AUMLA 96 (November): 200-38.
  • Estok, Simon C. (1999). "Letter," Forum on Literatures of the Environment, PMLA 114.5 (Oct. 1999): 1095-1096.
  • Estok, Simon C. (2005). “Shakespeare and Ecocriticism: An Analysis of ‘Home’ and ‘Power’ in King Lear.” AUMLA 103 (May 2005): 15-41.
  • Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (Eds). The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia, 1996.
  • Gomides, Camilo. 'Putting a New Definition of Ecocriticism to the Test: The Case of The Burning Season, a film (mal)Adaptation". ISLE Vol. 13.1 Winter 2006 13-23.
  • Meeker, Joseph W. "The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology." New York: Scribner's, 1972.
  • Phillips, Dana. The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture, and Literature in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Rueckert, William. "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism." Iowa Review 9.1 (Winter 1978): 71-86.
  • Vogel, Joseph Henry. "Ecocriticism as an Economic School of Thought: Woody Allen's Match Point as Exemplary." OMETECA Science and Humanities Vol. XII 2008 105-119.

[edit] Further reading

  • Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2004.