Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where
literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various
ways literature treats the subject of nature.[1] It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea
called "literary ecology" in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972).[2]

The term 'ecocriticism' was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay "Literature and
Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism".[3][4] It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analyzing
the works of authors, researchers and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature.[5]
Some ecocritics brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary
environmental situation, though not all ecocritics agree on the purpose, methodology, or scope of
ecocriticism.

In the United States, ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of
Literature and Environment (ASLE),[6] which hosts a biennial conference for scholars who deal with
environmental matters in literature and the environmental humanities in general. ASLE publishes a
journal—Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)—in which current
international scholarship can be found.

Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations,

including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literary criticism", and is often
informed by other fields such as ecology, sustainable design, biopolitics, environmental history,
environmentalism, and social ecology, among others.
Definition
In comparison with other 'political' forms of criticism, there has been relatively little dispute about
the moral and philosophical aims of ecocriticism, although its scope has broadened from nature
writing, romantic poetry, and canonical literature to take in film, television, theatre, animal stories,
architectures, scientific narratives and an extraordinary range of literary texts. At the same time,
ecocriticism has borrowed methodologies and theoretically informed approaches liberally from
other fields of literary, social and scientific study.

Cheryll Glotfelty's working definition in The Ecocriticism Reader is that "ecocriticism is the study
of the relationship between literature and the physical environment",[6] and one of the implicit
goals of the approach is to recoup professional dignity for what Glotfelty calls the "undervalued
genre of nature writing".[7] Lawrence Buell defines "'ecocriticism' ... as [a] study of the relationship
between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist
praxis".[8]

Simon Estok noted 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".[9]

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".[10] This echoes the functional approach of the cultural ecology branch of ecocriticism,
which analyzes the analogies between ecosystems and imaginative texts and posits that such
texts potentially have an ecological (regenerative, revitalizing) function in the cultural system.[11]

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.
All ecocritics share an environmentalist motivation of some sort, but whereas the majority are
'nature endorsing',[12] some are 'nature sceptical'. In part this entails a shared sense of the ways in
which 'nature' has been used to legitimize gender, sexual and racial norms (so homosexuality has
been seen as 'unnatural', for example), but it also involves scepticism about the uses to which
'ecological' language is put in ecocriticism; it can also involve a critique of the ways cultural norms
of nature and the environment contribute to environmental degradation. Greg Garrard has dubbed
'pastoral ecology' the notion that nature undisturbed is balanced and harmonious,[13] while Dana
Phillips has criticised the literary quality and scientific accuracy of nature writing in The Truth of
Ecology. Similarly, there has been a call to recognize the place of the environmental justice
movement in redefining ecocritical discourse.[14]

In response to the question of 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".[15] He tests it
for a film 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. Ashton Nichols has recently argued that the historical dangers of a romantic version of
nature now need to be replaced by "urbanatural roosting", a view that sees urban life and the
natural world as closely linked and argues for humans to live more lightly on the planet, the way
virtually all other species do.[16]

The interdisciplinary nature of Ecocriticism and Islam as well as their mutual interest in nature led
to the coinage of Islamecocriticism in 2021. Islemecocriticism is fully introduced by ISLE:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment in "Islamecocriticism: Green Islam
Introduced to Ecocriticism."[17] The article is shortly followed by a thorough representation of
Material Islamecocriticism in "Matter Really Matters: A Poetic Material Islamecocritical Reading
of Inanimateness Animism"[18] which appeared in Kritika Kultura .

In literary studies
Ecocritics investigate such things as the underlying ecological values, what, precisely, is meant by
the word nature, and whether the examination of "place" should be a distinctive category, much like
class, gender or race. Ecocritics examine human perception of wilderness, and how it has changed
throughout history and whether or not current environmental issues are accurately represented or
even mentioned in popular culture and modern literature. Not only do ecocritics determine the
actual meaning of nature writing texts, but they use those texts for analyzing the practices of
society in relationship to nature. They also critique visions that are human- centered and man/male
centered. Scholars in ecocriticism engage in questions regarding anthropocentrism, and the
"mainstream assumption that the natural world be seen primarily as a resource for human beings"
as well as critical approaches to changing ideas in "the material and cultural bases of modern
society."[19] Recently, "empirical ecocritics (http://www.empiricalecocriticism.com) " have begun
empirically evaluating the influence of ecofiction on its readers.[20] Other disciplines, such as
history, economics, philosophy, ethics, and psychology, are also considered by ecocritics to be
possible contributors to ecocriticism.

While William Rueckert may have been the first person to use the term ecocriticism (Barry 240) in
his 1978 essay entitled Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism, ecocriticism as a
movement owes much to Rachel Carson's 1962 environmental exposé Silent Spring. Drawing from
this critical moment, Rueckert's intent was to focus on "the application of ecology and ecological
concepts to the study of literature".[21]

Ecologically minded individuals and scholars have been publishing progressive works of
ecotheory and criticism since the explosion of environmentalism in the late 1960s and 1970s.
However, because there was no organized movement to study the ecological/environmental side
of literature, these important works were scattered and categorized under a litany of different
subject headings: pastoralism, human ecology, regionalism, American Studies etc. British marxist
critic Raymond Williams, for example, wrote a seminal critique of pastoral literature in 1973, The
Country and the City.

Another early ecocritical text, Joseph Meeker's The Comedy of Survival (1974), proposed a
version of an argument that was later to dominate ecocriticism and environmental philosophy; that
environmental crisis is caused primarily by a cultural tradition in the West of separation of culture
from nature, and elevation of the former to moral predominance. Such anthropocentrism is
identified in the tragic conception of a hero whose moral struggles are more important than mere
biological survival, whereas the science of animal ethology, Meeker asserts, shows that a "comic
mode" of muddling through and "making love not war" has superior ecological value. In the later,
"second wave" ecocriticism, Meeker's adoption of an ecophilosophical position with apparent
scientific sanction as a measure of literary value tended to prevail over Williams's ideological and
historical critique of the shifts in a literary genre's representation of nature.

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."[22] Nevertheless, ecocriticism—unlike feminist and
Marxist criticisms—failed to crystallize into a coherent movement in the late 1970s, and indeed
only did so in the US in the 1990s.

In the mid- 1980s, scholars began to work collectively to establish ecocriticism as a genre,
primarily through the work of the Western Literature Association in which the revaluation of nature
writing as a non- fictional literary genre could function. During the late- 1980s poet Jack Collom
was awarded a 2nd National Endowment for the Arts grant, for his ground- breaking work in this
emerging genre. Collom taught an influential Eco- Lit course at Naropa University in Boulder,
Colorado, for nearly two decades. In 1990, at the University of Nevada, Reno, Glotfelty became the
first person to hold an academic position as a professor of Literature and the Environment, and
UNR, with the aid of the now- retired Glotfelty and the remaining professor Michael P. Branch, has
retained the position it established at that time as the intellectual home of ecocriticism even as
ASLE has burgeoned into an organization with thousands of members in the US alone. From the
late 1990s, new branches of ASLE and affiliated organizations were started in the UK, Japan,
Korea, Australia and New Zealand (ASLEC- ANZ), India (OSLE- India), Southeast Asia (ASLE-
ASEAN), Taiwan, Canada and Europe. The emergence of ecocriticism in British literary criticism is
usually dated to the publication in 1991 of Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental
Tradition by Jonathan Bate.

Ecocriticism’s second wave emerged in the 2000s through a more complex understanding of the
overall history of global environmentalism and environmental justice. According to Lawrence Buell,
former Harvard professor and proponent of ecocriticism, the second wave of ecocriticism aligns
with public health environmentalism, with ethics and politics that are sociocentric rather than
ecocentric. The second wave not only considers rural landscapes or wilderness, but also
landscapes of urban and industrial transformation. It is inspired by writers such as Charles
Dickens, who wrote about Victorian- era public health concerns, and the American novelist Upton
Sinclair, as well as by global activists, such as Ken Saro- Wiwa, who was executed for his protests
against ecological devastation in Nigeria, and Michiko Ishimure, who wrote about Minamata
disease and the effects of mercury poisoning. The second wave of ecocriticism distinguishes
itself from the first wave by prioritizing the exploration of issues such as environmental resource
distribution, environmental justice, minority and socioeconomic impacts related to environmental
circumstances. A representative of second- wave ecocriticism is the 2002 Environmental Justice
Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy. [23]

Recent eco- critical scholarship has seen issues concerning eco- anxiety, veganism, and activism
take precedence. Scholars are now starting to take into consideration the impact of the Covid- 19
pandemic on environmental activism and the climate crisis more broadly. In their 2022 Special
Issue for Green Letters entitled 'A New Poetics of Space', the co- editors, Lucy Jeffery and Vicky
Angelaki, remark: 'We hope that through the analysis of the act of walking in the creative arts we
can understand our role in shaping the environmental state in which we find ourselves. Throughout
this volume we ask: is there a way yet to describe how our attitude towards our being in the
environment has shifted since the Covid- 19 pandemic?' [24] This scholarly volume is evidence of a
current trend in eco- critical scholarship to explore the impact of the twenty- first century's
technological developments, societal shifts, environmental challenges, and political situation
through the perspective of creative works that are concerned with the poetics of space, health,
and the environment (both urban and rural).
See also

Animal studies

Critical theory

Cultural ecology

Ecolinguistics

Ecosophy

Ethnobiology

Environmental humanities

References

1. "What is ecocriticism? – Environmental

Humanities Center" (http://ehc.english.ucs
 b.edu/?page_id=2388) . Retrieved
26 February 2020.

2. Meeker, Joseph W. (1972). The Comedy of

Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. New
York. ISBN 9780816516865.

3. "Ecocriticism" (https://www.oxfordbibliogra
phies.com/view/document/obo-97801902
21911/obo-9780190221911-0014.xml) .
obo. Retrieved 4 October 2021.

4. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in

Literary Ecology. Athens, Georgia: University
of Georgia Press. 1996. pp. xxviii. ISBN 9-
780-8203-1781-6.
 5. "What is Ecocriticism?: Literary Movements"
(https://www.aresearchguide.com/ecocritic
ism.html) . A Research Guide for Students.
27 August 2018. Retrieved 5 September
2019.

6. Glotfelty & Fromm 1996, p. xviii

7. Glotfelty & Fromm 1996, p. xxxi

8. 430, n.20

9. Estok 2001, p. 220

10. Estok 2005, pp. 16-17

11. Zapf 2008

12. Kate Soper, "What is Nature?", 1998

13. Barry 2009, pp. 56-58

14. Buell 1998

15. Gomides, C. (1 January 2006). "Putting a
New Definition of Ecocriticism to the Test:
The Case of The Burning Season, a Film
(Mal)Adaptation". Interdisciplinary Studies
in Literature and Environment. 13 (1): 13–
23. doi:10.1093/isle/13.1.13 (https://doi.or
g/10.1093%2Fisle%2F13.1.13) .
ISSN 1076-0962 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/issn/1076-0962) .

16. Macmillan. "Macmillan" (http://us.macmilla

n.com/beyondromanticecocriticism-1/Asht
onNichols) .

17. Abolfotoh, Inas. "Islamecocriticism: Green

Islam Introduced to Ecocriticism." ISLE:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and
Environment, vol. 28, no. 4, 2021, pp. 1371-
90, https:// doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa139.
18. Abolfotoh, Inas. "Matter Really Matters: A
Poetic Material Islamecocritical Reading of
Inanimateness Animism." Kritika Kultura,
vol. 0, no. 37, 2021, pp. 102-27,
https://dx.doi.org/10.13185/KK2021.0037
06 .

19. Clark, Timothy (2011). The Cambridge

Introduction to Literature and the
Environment. New York: Cambridge UP.
p. 2. ISBN 9780521720908.
20. Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew; Weik von
Mossner, Alexa; Małecki, W. P. (1 May
2020). "Empirical Ecocriticism:
Environmental Texts and Empirical
Methods" (https://academic.oup.com/isle/
article/27/2/327/5849158) .
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and
Environment. 27 (2): 327–336.
doi:10.1093/isle/isaa022 (https://doi.org/1
0.1093%2Fisle%2Fisaa022) . ISSN 1076-
0962 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1076-
0962) .

21. Glotfelty & Fromm 1996, p. 107

22. Glotfelty & Fromm 1996, p. vii

23. Buell, Lawrence (2011). "Ecocriticism:
Some Emerging Trends" (https://www.jstor.
org/stable/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0087) .
Qui Parle. 19 (2): 87–115.
doi:10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0087 (https://do
i.org/10.5250%2Fquiparle.19.2.0087) .
ISSN 1041-8385 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/issn/1041-8385) .
JSTOR 10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0087 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/quiparle.
19.2.0087) . S2CID 141536349 (https://api.
semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:14153634
9) .
24. Jeffery, Lucy and Vicky Angelaki,
‘Introduction’, Green Letters, 26.3, (2022),
Special Issue ‘A New Poetics of Space’,
203-209 (p. 208),
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1
080/14688417.2022.2113632

Sources

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous:

Perception and Language in a More-
than-Human World. New York:
Pantheon, 1996.

Alex, Rayson K., S. Susan Deborah &

Sachindev P.S. Culture and Media:
Ecocritical Explorations. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Barry, Peter. "Ecocriticism". Beginning Theory:
An Introduction to Literary and Cultural
Theory. 3rd ed. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2009.

Bate, Jonathan. Romantic Ecology:

Wordsworth and the Environmental
Tradition. London and New York:
Routledge, 1991.

Bladow, Kyle and Jennifer Ladino (Eds).

"Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion,
Embodiment, Environment". Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 2018.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental
Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing,
and the Formation of American
Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England: Harvard
University Press, 1995.

Bilbro, Jeffrey. Loving God's Wildness: The

Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in
American Literature. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 2015.

Buell, Lawrence. "Toxic Discourse." (http://das

h.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/26
37816/Buell_ToxicDiscourse.pdf?seq
uence=4) Critical Inquiry 24.3 (1998):
639–665.
Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered
World: Literature, Culture, and
Environment in the U.S. and Beyond.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 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.

Coupe, Laurence, ed. The Green Studies

Reader: From Romanticism to
Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2000.

Cranston, CA. & Robert Zeller, eds. "The

Littoral Zone: Australian Contexts and
their Writers". New York: Rodopi, 2007.
Estok, Simon C. (2001). "A Report Card on
Ecocriticism." (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20050211214042/http://www.
asle.umn.edu/archive/intro/estok.htm
l) AUMLA 96 (November): 200–38.

Estok, Simon C. (2005). "Shakespeare and

Ecocriticism: An Analysis of 'Home'
and 'Power' in King Lear." AUMLA 103
(May 2005): 15–41.
Forns-Broggi, Roberto. "La aventura perdida
del ecopoema (http://www.paginadep
oesia.com.ar/escritos_pdf/Fornix_5_6
_tercera_parte.pdf) Archived (https://
web.archive.org/web/2016040902563
6/http://www.paginadepoesia.com.ar/
escritos_pdf/Fornix_5_6_tercera_part
e.pdf) 9 April 2016 at the Wayback
Machine" in Fórnix 5/6 (2007): 376–
394. (in Spanish)

Frederick, Suresh. Contemporary

Contemplations on Ecoliterature. New
Delhi:Authorpress, 2012.

Frederick, Suresh. Ecocriticism: Paradigms

and Praxis. Chennai: NCBH, Dec 2019.
Print.
Frederick, Suresh and Samuel Rufus.
Contemporary Contemplations on
Green Literatures. New Delhi:
Authorpress, 2021.

Garrard, Greg, Ecocriticism. New York:

Routledge, 2004.

Garrard, Greg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of

Ecocriticism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014.

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 13.1 (2006):
13–23.

Heise, Ursula K. "Greening English: Recent

Introductions to Ecocriticism."
Contemporary Literature 47.2 (2006):
289–298.

Indian Journal of Ecocriticism

Iovino, Serenella and Serpil Oppermann (Eds).

"Material Ecocriticism". Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Kroeber, Karl. Ecological Literary Criticism:

Romantic Imagining and the Biology of
Mind. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.
Lindholdt, Paul. Explorations in Ecocriticism:
Advocacy, Bioregionalism, and Visual
Design (https://rowman.com/ISBN/97
80739194980/Explorations-in-Ecocritic
ism-Advocacy-Bioregionalism-and-Visu
al-Design) , Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2015.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden:

Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in
America. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1964.

McKusick, James C. Green Writing:

Romanticism and Ecology. New York:
St. Martin's, 2000.

Meeker, Joseph W. "The Comedy of Survival:

Studies in Literary Ecology." New York:
Scribner's, 1972.
Moore, Bryan L. Ecology and Literature:
Ecocentric Personification from
Antiquity to the Twenty-first Century.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought.

Cambridge, MAL Harvard University
Press, 2012.

Nichols, Ashton. "Beyond Romantic

Ecocriticism: Toward Urbanatural
Roosting." New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011. Paperback, 2012.

Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. Mountain Gloom and

Mountain Glory: The Development of
the Aesthetics of the Infinite. Seattle:
Univ. of Washington Press, 1959.
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 (1978): 71–86.

Rojas Pérez, Walter. La ecocrítica hoy. San

José, Costa Rica: Aire Moderno, 2004.

Selvamony, Nirmal, Nirmaldasan & Rayson K.

Alex. Essays in Ecocriticism. Delhi:
Sarup and Sons and OSLE-India, 2008.

Slovic, Scott. Seeking Awareness in American

Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie
Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry,
Barry Lopez. Salt Lake City, UT:
University of Utah Press, 1992.
 Vogel, Joseph Henry. "Ecocriticism as an
Economic School of Thought: Woody
Allen's Match Point as Exemplary."
OMETECA: Science and Humanities 12
(2008): 105–119.

Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City.

London: Chatto and Windus, 1973.

Zapf, Hubert. "Literary Ecology and the Ethics

of Texts." New Literary History 39.4
(2008): 847–868.

External links

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in

Literature and the Environment (https://a
cademic.oup.com/isle)
Journal of Ecocriticism (http://www.eco
criticism.ca)

Ecozon@: European Journal of

Literature, Culture and Environment (http
s://web.archive.org/web/201201181611
55/http://www.ecozona.eu/index.php/jo
urnal)

Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism (ht

tp://asle.org.uk/green-letters/)

Association for the Study of Literature

and Environment (https://www.asle.or
g/)

European Association for the Study of

Literature, Culture and Environment
(EASLCE) (https://www.easlce.eu/)
Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary
Environmental Studies (NIES) (http://ww
w.nordforsk.org/en/programmes/projec
ts/nordic-network-for-interdisciplinary-e
nvironmental-studies-nies) Archived (htt
ps://web.archive.org/web/20150907114
542/http://www.nordforsk.org/en/progr
ammes/projects/nordic-network-for-inte
rdisciplinary-environmental-studies-nie
s) 7 September 2015 at the Wayback
Machine

"GIECO: Grupo de Investigación en

Ecocrítica (https://sites.google.com/sit
e/groupgieco/) Archived (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20201017045631/http
 s://sites.google.com/site/groupgieco/)
17 October 2020 at the Wayback
Machine"

Articles on ecocriticism in Western

American Literature (https://westername
ricanliterature.com/ecocriticism/)

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Ecocriticism&oldid=1209660971"

This page was last edited on 23 February 2024, at

00:22 (UTC). •
Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless
otherwise noted.