Ecocriticism
What is Ecocriticism?
So, what is ecological awareness?
• Well, ecology is the
study of the
relationships
between the air,
land, water, animals,
plants, etc.
Which leads us to:
ENVIRONMENTALISM
Which leads us to consider
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• Sustainable development is
a pattern of resource use
that aims to meet human
needs while preserving the
environment so that these
needs can be met not only
in the present, but in the
indefinite future.
Ecological Footprint
• Is the world’s premier
measure of humanity’s
demand on nature
• www.myfootprint.org
Climate Change
Green Living / Going Green
• To be environmentally
sound or beneficial
• Preservation of
resources and offering
environmentally
friendly alternatives to
traditional methods or
products
CHOICE!
You have a choice.
Yes, YOU have a choice.
Choice to become aware.
Choice in purchasing.
BUT
YOU have NO choice if you
are not aware!
Why Ecocriticism?
• Most ecocritical work
shares a common
motivation: the
awareness that we have
reached the age of
environmental limits, a
time when human
actions are damaging
the planet's basic life
support systems.
• Ecocritic work is a
direct intervention in
current social, political,
and economic debates
surrounding
environmental pollution
and preservation.
• In the words of historian Donald Worster,
• “We are facing a global crisis today, not because of how
ecosystems function but rather because of how our
ethical systems function. Getting through the crisis
requires understanding our impact on nature, but even
more, it requires understanding those ethical systems and
using that understanding to reform them. Historians,
along with literary scholars, anthropologists, and
philosophers, cannot do the reforming, of course, but
they can help with the understanding.”
Trying to Make a Difference
When Did It Emerge?
• Ecocriticism is one
of the most recent
schools literary
theory, emerging
in the mid-1990’s.
• Ecocriticism was
heralded by the
publication of two
highly influential
works, both published
in 1996
The first work:
The Ecocriticism
Reader
edited by
Cheryll Glotfelty
and Harold Fromm
The second work:
The Environmental
Imagination
By: Lawrence Buell
Academic Respectability
• Association for the Study of
Literature and the
Environment (ASLE)
Academic Respectability
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment
• ASLE has an official
journal –ISLE -- in
which the most
current scholarship
in the rapidly
evolving field of
ecocriticism can be
found.
Academic Respectability
Ecocentric Perspectives
•
= paying particular
attention to the
representation of the
natural world
•
asks if the earth is
represented as a
commodity or as a
partner
• Ecocentric perspectives
give special canonical
emphasis to writers
who foreground nature
as a major part of their
subject matter, such as
the American
Transcendentalists.
Ecological Nonfiction
•
Ecocentric perspectives
extend the range of
literary-critical practice by
placing a new emphasis on
relevant nonfiction
writing, especially
topographical materials
such as essays, travel
writing, memoirs, and
regional literature.
Establishing a “Green” Canon
• Another focus of
ecocritics has been
the redefinition of
the canon.
Ecocentric values emphasize:
Ecospirituality
Hebrew/Christian Perspective
on the Environment
And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth.
-- Genesis 1:28
Colours of the Wind
•
You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know ...
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn
moonOr asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the
mountains? Can you paint with all the colors of
the wind?
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're
worth
•The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind
You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind
Hierarchy’s existence in our world
• Man as the owner of the land
• Man as the supreme being
• Humans as the oppressor and
the environment as the
oppressed
Establishing a “Green” Vocabulary
• Ecocritics have begun to
realize the limitations of
existing vocabularies for
keeping up with the
changes in attitudes,
values, beliefs, and ways
of conceptualizing Nature
that are emerging in
ecocriticism.
Establishing a “Green” Vocabulary
• One task is to add new kinds of
words to balance out an
ecological vocabulary now
dominated by corporate
interests.
• When we hear, for example, a
forester comment that timber
harvesting will “sustain the
productivity of the land,” we
should ask, “Productivity for
moles?”
Green Advertising a.k.a.
Eco-Marketing
• Advertising “green”
• Many products are now labeled
as “environmentally friendly”,
“biodegradable” made from
“recycled materials”
• A new niche market for a
variety of products
Important Ecocritical Theorists
Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm
• “Ecocriticism is the study of the
relationship between literature
and the physical environment.
Just as feminist criticism
examines literature from a genderconscious perspective, and
Marxist criticism brings an
awareness of economic class to its
reading of texts, ecocriticism
takes an earth-centered approach
to literary studies.”
-- The Ecocriticism Reader (1996)
Lawrence Buell
• “The impression that human affairs
are not in fundamental ways subject
to regulation by the environment is
created by our ostensible success at
regulating it. This blindness to the
environment produces unintended
destabilizing consequences like skin
lesions from the ozone hole, owing
partly to the products of cooling
technologies that have insulated us
from confronting the scandal of our
environmental dependence.
-- The Environmental Imagination
(1996)
Scott Slovic (Editor of ISLE)
• “Literary scholarship is, on the most
fundamental level, associated with
human values and attitudes. We
should, as critics, consider how
literary expression challenges readers
to decide what in the world is
meaningful/important to them. We
can't afford to shy away from the
issue of values, and it's one reason
why the humanities should be a
crucial part of university programs in
environmental studies.”
-- Awareness in American Nature Writing
(1992)
Important Ecocritical Writers
Henry David Thoreau
• "I went to the woods
because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only
the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not
learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that
I had not lived."
-- Walden (1854)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The lover of nature is he
whose inward and outward
senses are truly adjusted to
each other; who has retained
the spirit of infancy even into
the era of manhood. His
intercourse with heaven and
earth, becomes part of his
daily food. In the presence of
nature, a wild delight runs
through the man, in spite of
real sorrows.”
-- On Nature (1836)
Annie Dillard
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
(1974)
 A young woman in 20th
century Virginia tries to live
like Thoreau, with revelatory
results: "In nature I find
grace tangled in a rapture
with violence; I find an
intricate landscape whose
forms are fringed in death; I
find mystery, newness, and a
kind of exuberant,
spendthrift energy."
Norman Maclean
A River Runs Through It (1976)
• “Eventually, all things merge into
one, and a river runs through it. The
river was cut by the world's great
flood and runs over rocks from the
basement of time. On some of the
rocks are timeless raindrops. Under
the rocks are the words, and some
of the words are theirs. I am
haunted by waters.”
Gary Snyder
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
-- For All (1992)
Important Ecocritical Terms
Shallow Ecology vs Deep Ecology
Commodification
• The process by which an
object or person becomes
a commodity.
• Capitalist society, which
is structured around
economic exchange, is
seen by many critics to
commodify the whole
world, including the
environment.
Ecofeminism
• Ecofeminists agree
that the domination of
women and the
domination of nature
are fundamentally
connected
Ecofeminism (cont.)
• Central to this liberation
is a recognition of the
value of the activities
traditionally associated
with women; childbirth,
nurturing and the whole
domestic arena.
Questions Ecocritics Ask about
Literature
Ecocritical Questions
• What does ‘Nature’
represent in the essay?
Can you interpret it
within an ecocritical
framework?
Ecocritical Questions
• Which ‘image’ or
‘symbolic
representation’ of
nature does the author
construct?
Ecocritical Questions
• What role does nature
and the landscape play
here?
Ecocritical Questions
• How do nature and
human emotion relate
to each other in the
text? How does nature
affect emotion?
Ecocritical Questions
• Are the values
expressed in this play
consistent with
ecological wisdom?
Ecocritical Questions
• What is the relationship
between humans and the
environment in this text?
Is the environment
commodified?
Ecocritical Questions
• How do our metaphors
of the land influence
the way we treat it?
i.e. The world is your
oyster.
Ecocritical Questions
• Do men write about
nature differently
than women do?
Ecocritical Questions
• How has the concept of
wilderness changed over time?
Ecocritical Questions
• In what ways and to
what effect is the
environmental crisis
seeping into
contemporary
literature and popular
culture?
Useful
Links
http://www.asle.umn.edu/
http://www.unr.edu/cla/engl
/isle/
Eco Art
Artwork created by artists concerned with the state of
our environment and includes:
• foreground nature as important subject matter
• interpret nature to inform the public about environmental problems
• re-envision our relationship to nature and propose new ways to co-exist
• reclaim and remediate damaged environments
• use environmentally friendly and found products
Artist: Lynn Hull
Applying Ecocriticism to Art
• What is the artists message? What statement is the artist trying to make?
• How has the use of colour highlighted certain aspects of the piece?
• Are certain images fore-grounded? Are certain images hidden or blurred?
What is the effect of this?
• Are certain images more detailed than others?
• What is the relationship between humans and the
environment in the piece?