University of Helsinki
Comparative
Literature
27.10.2014 –
25.11.2014
Examination
8.12.2014
Pekka Raittinen M.A.
Literature and Nature
Introduction 27.2014
Roland Emmerich: The Day After
Tomorrow 2004
The ”trope” of environmental
catastrophe / disaster?
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
Terry Eagleton
(1996): [Natural]
science uses
narrative conventions
and metaphors too
The long tradition of
Western
apocalypticism in
relation to
environmental
thought (Thomas
Malthus, Rachel
Carson, Paul Erlich…)
That leads us to => Ecocriticism
”Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the
relationship between literature and the physical
environment.” Cheryl Glofelty, 1996
Kerridge (1998): [The global]
environmental catastrophe is also a
catastrophe of representation
Greg Garrard (2004): Cultural analysis=>
”ecological literacy”
Ecocriticism isn’t (and doesn’t claim to be)
natural science => a humanistic,
hermeunetic field of study
At the same time it is multi- and cross
disciplinary
Motives and methods
1. The essential
quantity and character
of something
 2. The inherent force
which directs either the
world or human beings
or both
 3. The material world
itself, taken as
including or not
including human beings
 Greek Physis, Latin
Natura

Nature; definition(s) (Raymond
Williams Keywords, 1983)
Engl. Culture from
the Latin Cultura;
literally ”to cultive”
Roman orator Cicero;
animi cultura
Cato the Elder:De
Agri Cultura (”On
Farming”)
German
Romanticism: Bildung
Nature vs. culture – The
eternal dichotomy?
Henry David Thoreau: ”Ancient
poetry and mythology suggest, at
least, that husbandry was once a
sacred art…” Walden, 1854
Ecocriticism
Roots & History
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Ecocriticism
From the 1990’s in the
United States and in
Great Britain
William Rueckert
Literature and Ecology:
An Experiment in
Ecocriticism, 1978
Initially the focus of
study was on non-fiction
nature writing and
poetry of the English
Romanticism
Sub-fields: Ecofeminism,
eco-Marxism, deep
ecology etc.
Transcendentalism

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A literary, philosophical
and social movement in
New England from circa
1830’s to 1860’s
Influences include
Unitarian Church, idealism
of Immanuel Kant and
German and English
Romanticism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803 – 1882): essay
Nature (1836)
Henry David Thoreau
(1817 – 1862)
Thomas Cole: Home
in the Woods, 1847
John Muir ja Theodor
Roosevelt, 1906

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Muir (1838 – 1914) ScottishAmerican naturalist, author
and preservation-activist
Yosemite National Park, first
protected 1864, established
1890
My First Summer in the Sierra,
1911
Aldo Leopold: A Sand County
Almanac 1949
Edward Abbey Desert
Solitaire; The Monkey Wrench
Gang
Rachel Carson: The Silent
Spring, 1961
John Muir and American nature
writing

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Frederick Jackson Turner:
The Significance of the
Frontier in American
History (1893) => sc.
Frontier Thesis
Henry Nash Smith: Virgin
Land: The American West
as Symbol and Myth
(1950)
Leo Marx: The Machine in
the Garden: Technology
and the Pastoral Ideal in
America (1964)
American Studies and area studies



Based on readings of
Romantic poets; seminal
texts include William
Wordsworth, Percy
Shelley, John Clare et al.
Marxist cultural critic
Raymond Williams: The
Country and the City
(1973)
Jonathan Bate Romantic
Ecology – Wordsworth
and the Environmental
Tradition (1991) => The
shift from “red” to “green”
in literary studies after
the Cold War
The English tradition
Lawrence Buell The
Environmental
Imagination – Thoreau,
Nature Writing, and the
Formation of American
Culture (1995)
Greg Garrard Ecocriticism
(2004)
Carolyn Merchant The
Death of Nature (1980)
Simon Schama:
Landscape and Memory
(1995)
Ecocriticism vs.
Environmental History?
”The Classics”
In Praxis
So, what does ecocriticism do?
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How is nature represented?
The physical environment and plot?
Are the values of the text ecological?
Metaphors of ´the land’?
The genre of nature writing?
Ecological problems in contemporary fiction?
The tropes of ”wilderness” and ”wild nature”?
Locality and the category of locus?
Cheryll Glotfelty(1996); Questions
and definitions
1. “The nonhuman environment is present
not merely as a framing device…”
 2. ”The human interest is not understood
to be the only legitimate interest”
 3. “Human accountability to the
environment is part of the text’s ethical
orientation”
 4. Some sense of the environment as a
process […] is at least implicit in […] text”

Lawrence Buell’s Environmental
Text
Äänekäs kevät –
Ekokriittinen
kirjallisuustutkimus (Toni
Lahtinen & Markku
Lehtimäki, toim. SKS 2004)
 Kukku Melkas: Historia, halu
ja tiedon käärme Aino
Kallaksen tuotannossa. SKS
2006.
 Mikko Saikku 2005: This
Delta, This Land. An
Environmental History of
Mississippi Delta Floodland.
 Toni Lahtinen: Maan
höyryävässä sylissä –
Luonto, ihminen ja
yhteiskunta Timo K. Mukan
tuotannossa (WSOY 2014)

Suomessa – In Finland
Pathetic fallacy =>Poetic practice of
attributing human emotion or responses to
nature, inanimate objects, or animals
John Rushkin: ”Of the Pathetic
Fallacy” (Modern Painters, 1843 –
1860)
ISLE Journal –
Interdisplinary
Studies in Literature
and Environment,
Founded 1993
Editor-in-Chief
ecocritic Scott Slovic
ASLE – Association for the
Study of Literature and
Environment, Founded
1992
Michael P. Cohen (2004):
”Blues in the Green:
Ecocriticism Under Critique”
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“If you want to be an ecocritic,
be prepared to explain what you
do and be criticized, if not
satirized”.
Personal narrative Vs. critical
analysis => bad journalistic
prose?
Changing paradigms of natural
science
Escaping antropocentrism =>
Mission impossible?
(The (Anglo)American roots of
ecocriticism? Problem?)
“Standin' at the crossroads, risin' sun goin'
down
. . . got the crossroad blues this mornin', Lord,
baby I'm sinkin' down”
-- Robert Johnson
At the Crossroads