Post 1
An explanation of ecocriticism and environmental literature
Nature and literature are deeply intertwined; if we dig deep into the origin of storytelling, we can find nature at its roots. Many writers pour their hearts into creating wonderful worlds and every interpretation of nature reveals different perspectives we may not have considered before. Nature has been used in both poetry and prose in various ways, sometimes being at the heart and other times at the periphery. In both cases, the environment has enriched literature throughout history and has allowed writers to transform their ideas and give them life. It can be used as symbols, literary devices, and can even become characters itself.
This unique presence for the environment has intrigued many readers and writers. In my case, I have always been interested in analysing the hidden meanings of a written piece, especially those masked by elements of the environment the writer may have used. Recently, I have discovered a name for the act I was doing:
When we analyse the way humans and the environment are related to one another in literature or even in film, media, history, philosophy, and culture, we are focusing on a literary and cultural theory called ecocriticism. It can also include science, politics, ethics, and economics as objects of criticism. That is the beautiful thing about ecocriticism: it brings together numerous fields and points out their joint objective. In other words, it studies the way the environment is incorporated, regarded, and used in many disciplines, including literature. Doing that allows critics to discover how those disciplines address and affect environmental awareness and the way people interact with nature, both mentally and physically. I will mostly be looking at ecocriticism focusing on literature.
Initially, Joseph Meeker was the first to bring the term into the world under the name literary ecology in his book The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (published 1974) and William Rueckert later transformed it into an “-ism”. Ecocriticism began gaining attention in the 1990s when the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment was founded in 1992. Then The Environmental Imagination by Lawerence Buell and The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (published in 1996) both helped spread the word further.
To evaluate how nature is addressed in society, we can look at two philosophies, anthropocentrism and deep ecology.
Anthropocentrism is taking an anthropocentric approach to looking at the environment in different disciplines. It means holding the idea that humans are the centre of the universe and everything else should be studied by looking at the profit, comfort, or convenience it may offer them. This view considers that humans are separate from nature, often even superior to it and all nonhumans. In this case, we analyse how the environment benefits or impacts the humans existing in the work
However, deep ecology, or biocentrism, approaches a work with an equal attitude to both humans and nature. In this perspective, humanity is a true and seamless part of nature and humans are equal to nonhumans, even interconnected. It recognizes the large dependence people have on the environment and studies how nonhumans are impacted by environmental issues. In this case, we analyse how the characters or the speaker and their environment interact.
Most readers and critics take on the anthropocentric view when studying a piece; even most writers in their writings consider only how the environment affects their characters and not vice versa. It may be largely due to the fact that society unconsciously teaches us to always centralise humanity in everything we do and treats the environment as a margin. It is a necessary approach, but employing a biocentric perspective must not be dismissed or forgotten. It would create numerous new and innovative ideas, fueling the creativity of many writers and teaching everyone the importance of being considerate of the nature that surrounds them.
In brief, ecocriticism often takes an “earth-centred approach to literary studies,” as Glotfelty and Fromm explain. However, it is often difficult to define as different scholars consider different definitions for it. It is a part of literary studies and includes the analysis of literature and the environment, but it is also looking at culture and other fields in an interdisciplinary way - “environmental criticism.” The most important aspect of ecocriticism is that it makes us realise how humans have considered nature throughout history and how in turn literature affects people’s view of the environment.
Ecocriticism emphasises the environmental aspects of writing, but what about writing that emphasises the environment?
From those two words, we can deduce an obvious definition for such literature. Works under this genre explicitly have the environment and environmental issues as their focus. In most prose and poetry, humans are the main or secondary characters and the environment is a means to advance the plot or create new meanings. In environmental literature, the environment is the main character, or at least so essential to the writer or main character that there would be completely no story or poem without it. In the former case, the absence of the environment would merely make it bland.
Unlike many genres, it is not restricted purely to fiction or nonfiction. Nonfiction pieces that express the danger the natural world faces and the environmental crises arising are also under environmental literature. In fact, according to Ursula K. Heise, the Chair of the Department of English and a professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, such texts are more effective in fueling environmentalism.
In her article Environmental Literature and the Ambiguities of Science, Heise explains that writing about nature goes back to authors like Virgil and Lucretius, but really started taking an environmentalist turn with Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White (1789) and the works of some Romantic poets. American environmental writings include the popular Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1851) and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature. Those books are all nonfiction and similar ones include Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore.
One unique result of fictional environmental literature is showing and convincing people of the negative impacts their activities have on the environment. Effective literary works always make readers feel strong emotions and leave them having ingrained a deep appreciation for nature. Hence, it is no wonder that poetry and novels can grow awareness in their readers. One type of example of such works is the poems in the anthology Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America (2006).
Environmental literature is a fresh change to the usually anthropocentric literature that occupies the centre of the stage. This kind of writing takes an ecocentric (or biocentric) approach and explores the different and new (and sometimes unusual) perspectives born under this light. It also tends to express environmental concerns and emphasise our responsibility towards nature.
As a conclusion, there is a lot of potential in the area of critical theory and literary work I have explored above. Both ecocriticism and environmental literature may not be as studied or well-known as other fields, but they actually have a huge, albeit perhaps behind-the-scenes, importance, especially with the gradual growth of environmentalism and environmental concerns.
What do you think of and know about those topics? Leave a comment to let us know!
References:
Heise, Ursula K. “Environmental Literature and the Ambiguities of Science.” Anglia, vol. 133, no. 1, 2015, pp. 22–36.
Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Ecocriticism: An Essay.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 27 Nov. 2016, https://literariness.org/2016/11/27/ecocriticism/.
Gladwin, Derek. “Ecocriticism.” Oxford Bibliographies, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0014.xml.