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 considerSUSTAINABLE 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

• ASLE has an official journal –ISLE -- in which the most current scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can be found.

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in

Literature and Environment

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 placesI guess it must be soBut still I cannot seeIf the savage one is meHow can there be so much that you don't know?You don't know ...

You think you own whatever land you land onThe Earth is just a dead thing you can claimBut I know every rock and tree and creatureHas a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are peopleAre the people who look and think like youBut if you walk the footsteps of a strangerYou'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 forestCome taste the sunsweet berries of the EarthCome roll in all the riches all around youAnd for once, never wonder what they're worth

•The rainstorm and the river are my brothersThe heron and the otter are my friendsAnd we are all connected to each otherIn a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?If you cut it down, then you'll never knowAnd you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinnedWe need to sing with all the voices of the mountainsWe need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and stillAll you'll own is Earth untilYou 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 gender-conscious 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 SnyderI 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?