Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is a subfield of literary scholarship involved in studying the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Ecocriticism began to cohere within literary scholarship in the 1990s, with contributions from a variety of academic disciplines. Modern ecocriticism remains an interdisciplinary field with contributions from the sciences, academic and social research, literature, and art. While nature writing, environmentalism, and natural philosophy are important parts of ecocriticism, the field can also be seen as encompassing a broader array of writing and media about the human relationship to the physical world, including urban and human-made artificial environments.

History of Ecocriticism

The term "ecocriticism" was first used in the 1978 essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism," by literary scholar William Rueckert. The term comes from the combination of the Greek words oikos, meaning "house," and kritikos, meaning "judge." Rueckert explained it as the application of ecological principles to the study of literature. Though Rueckert is credited with naming the field, a number of earlier works have been identified that contributed to the philosophical and literary underpinnings of the genre.

One of the earliest examples of ecocriticism is Leo Marx’s 1964 book The Machine in the Garden, which explores the theme in American literature of technology impinging on the pastoral lifestyle. In the book, Marx looks at how authors such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain used this theme in novels, speaking about situations where the introduction of new technological innovations had a drastic, often destructive impact on the natural environment.

In the 1974 book Comedy of Survival, Joseph Meeker uses the term "literary ecology" to refer to the study of natural, ecological, and environmental themes in literature, and specifically to the literary exploration of human history and ecological balance. In the book, Meeker proposes that Western culture has embraced a course of development that involves increasing separation from the natural environment, often leading to environmental degradation.

Beginning in 1989 literary researcher Cheryll Glotfelty began organizing the field of ecocriticism and presenting lectures on the subject at literary conferences. Glotfelty and colleagues’ efforts resulted in the establishment of a new organization, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), which was founded at a 1992 special session of a Western Literature Association Conference in Reno, Nevada. The following year the organization began publishing a new journal, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, to collect scholarly works contributing to the emerging field. In 1996 Glotfelty proposed a new, intentionally broad, and inclusive definition of ecocriticism, as a "study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment."

One of the most important foundational works of modern ecocriticism was the 1995 book The Environmental Imagination, by literary scholar Lawrence Buell. Using the work of Henry David Thoreau as the basis for his exploration, Buell produced a detailed description of Western literature about nature, wilderness, and ecology. From this point, ecocriticism, as a field, gravitated further toward the broad study of nature writing and ecological literature, inspired and encouraged by a growing global realization of the effect of human activity on the environment.

Some scholars divide ecocriticism into two periods, or "waves," marked by seminal developments in the field. According to this view, the first wave of ecocriticism comprises the texts of early ecological authors like Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain. The second wave of ecocriticism then begins with the ecological literature of the late twentieth century, including the seminal environmentalist book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. In general, growing concern over environmental degradation is one of the major focuses of both first- and second-wave ecocriticism but becomes more pronounced in the field after the 1970s.

Ecocriticism in the Twenty-First Century

Beginning in the late 1990s ecocriticism blended with environmental activism as scholars in the field have primarily focused on environmental issues, promoting sustainable ecological development and critiquing human interactions with nature and the environment. Modern ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary field, involving input from literary scholarship, the social and physical sciences, and practical activism. Ecocriticism has also blended with other fields, such as ecofeminism, which is a field of study that equates, compares, and correlates ecological degradation and the oppression of women. Ecocriticism also overlaps with deep ecology, a philosophical movement that promotes the intrinsic value of plants, animals, and ecological environments beyond their importance to humanity as a resource or target for exploitation.

Topics covered at the 2015 ASLE conference demonstrate the direction of modern ecocriticism. Seminars at the conference addressed such areas as interdisciplinary teaching about climate change, including presenting lessons on integrating climate change debate topics into the arts and humanities; ecology as a framework for exploring the art of writing memoirs; and the integration and recognition of ecocritical works by East Asian critics and scholars for a broader world audience.

Some literary critics have argued that the expansion of the field has resulted in an overall loss of focus as ecocritics increasingly attempt to be inclusive in selecting subjects for analysis. As the field has grown, scholars have also disagreed about the future direction of the field. Lawrence Buell’s 2005 history of the field, The Future of Environmental Criticism, argues for increased environmental activism from modern scholars. By contrast, some ecocritics have argued that the field should move away from the current focus on environmental activism and toward a more general and inclusive study of human-environmental relationships.

In a 2010 article in New Directions in Ecocriticism, Michael Verderame discusses the future of the field and advocates for a "third wave" of ecocriticism that broadens further still, to become more global and all-encompassing. Verderame argues that scholars and writers in the field should attempt to enhance their understanding of scientific data, allowing them to make their criticisms more relevant to a world of increasing scientific knowledge. To this end, Verderame maintains that ecocritics of the future will increasingly work with data such as weather maps, food price records, and ice-core data in describing and discussing the relationship between literature, human culture, and the physical environment. An example of modern ecocriticism as described by Verderame can be found in the 2011 Rob Nixon book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, in which Nixon uses a variety of social and physical science data to argue about the long-term, gradual effects of environmental issues on the well-being of poor communities and societies around the world.

Bibliography

Bergthaller, Hannes. "What Is Ecocriticism?" EASLCE. European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard Coll., 1995. Print.

Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. Print.

Cohen, Michael P. "Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique." Environmental History 9.1 (2004): 9–36. Digital file.

"A Message from the ASLE President." ASLE. Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, 2014. Web. 15 May 2015.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011. Print.

Vakoch, Douglas A., ed. Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature. Lanham: Rowman, 2014. Print.

Verderame, Michael. Introduction. New Directions in Ecocriticism Fall 2010: n.pag. IDEALS: Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship. Web. 15 May 2015.