PPT Ecocritism

ECOCRITICISM

or GREEN STUDIES

How can we define ecocriticism?

Ecocriticism is simply

the study of the relationships between literature and the physical environment.

When did ecocriticism begin?

Ecocriticism, as a concept, arose in the late 1970s in the west of the USA through the studies in the literature of the American West and the practice began in the late 1980s.

In the UK, it began in the early 1990s.

However, it is still an ‘emergent’ movement and does not have a widely-known set of assumptions, doctrines, or procedures.

Is ecocriticism a completely new approach in the field of literary criticism?

There had previously been a critical field known as ‘the study of nature writing’ until Cheryll Glotfelty revived the term ecocriticism and urged its adoption to this type of criticism in literature.

Ecocriticism in the USA


Cheryll Glotfelty is theacknowledged founder ofecocriticism in the USA.She established theprofessional infrastructure

ofthis movement.


• It’s connected to three 19th century American transcendentalist writers whose works celebrates nature, the life force, and the wilderness as manifested in America in 1840s. These are

•Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)•Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)•Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862)

Why are these writers important?

Emerson’s first book Nature, Fuller’s first book Summer on the Lakes and Thoreau’s Walden are considered the foundational works of American

‘eco-centered’ writing.

Ecocriticism in the UK


Jonathan Bate is thefounder. He is aprofessor of EnglishLiterature at theUniversity ofOxford.


It goes back to the British Romanticism of the

1790s. So, British ecocritics make the point that

many of their concerns were in discussion

in the UK before the term ‘ecocriticism’ existed.

However, there is no single founding figure within ecocriticism who has dominance over ecocritical practice.

What are the differences between the American and British ecocriticism?

Differences between the American and British ecocriticism

1. The American critics prefer the term ‘eco-criticism’, whereas ‘green studies’ is frequently used in the UK.


2. The infrastructure of ecocriticism in the UK is less developed than in the USA (there are no journals produced or formal bodies for ecocritics to join unlike the ones in the USA).


3. The American critics tend to be more ‘celebratory’ in tone. In other words, they are environmentally optimistic.

Whereas, the British critics tend to be more ‘minatory’, that is, they warn us of environmental threats coming out from governmental, industrial, commercial, and neo-colonial forces. In other words, they are environmentally pessimistic.

Although American and British movements are clearly linked in their aims, they differ in emphasis and ‘ancestry’.

What are the characteristic attitudes of ecocriticism?

The characteristic attitudes of ecocriticism

Natural reality

Ecocritics reject the notion that everythingis socially and/or linguistically constructed.

For the ecocritic, nature really exists, out therebeyond ourselves. It’s physically present as anentity which affects us, and which we can affect,perhaps fatally, if we mistreat it. We cannotreduce Nature to a concept.


‘Outdoor environment’ can be grouped into four areas:

• Area one: the wilderness (deserts, oceans, uninhabited continents)

• Area two: the scenic sublime (forests, lakes, mountains, cliffs, waterfalls)

• Area three: the countryside (hills, fields, woods)

• Area four: the domestic picturesque (parks, gardens, lanes)


•The different areas are basically a continuum from “pure” nature to nature that has become part of culture (is affected by culture) to predominantly culture.


A distinction between nature and culture is not always absolute and clear-cut. We have nature, and culture, and intermediate states, and all three are real.


Areas 3 and 4 (the countryside and the domestic picturesque) are often the settings for domestic fiction and lyric poetry which centres upon relationships between human beings.


•The first two areas (the wilderness and the scenic sublime) are the settings for epic and saga which centre on relations between human beings and cosmic forces (fate, destiny, etc) and for Promethean narratives in which human beings test the limits of their scope and powers.


What is special about the wilderness?

The wilderness is entered as if instinctively by those who would ‘find’ themselves. Remember Moses, Christ, Mohammad…


Is there any true wilderness?

No. Ecocritics claim that no true wilderness any

longer exists on the planet, for every region is

affected by global warming and other human-

centered problems.


In literary criticism, there has been always a Western cultural tradition of anthropocentric (human-centered) attitudes rather than ecocentric.

In ecocriticism, they shift the focus from human-centered to the eco-centered view.


It turns the conventional manner of reading inside out. It switches critical attention from inner to outer.

Setting is brought in from the critical margins to the center of critical discussion.


Establishing a “Green” Vocabulary

Ecocritics add new kinds of words to balance out an ecological vocabulary in the filed of literary criticism.A great deal of this vocabulary (e.g. ecological footprint) did not exist decades ago, and emphasizes the mainstream direction of this new approach in literary criticism.


Ecocritics give special canonical emphasis to writers who foreground nature as a major part of their subject matter, such as

• the American transcendentalists, • the British Romantics, • the poetry of John Clare, • the work of Thomas Hardy and • the Georgian poets of the early twentieth

century.


Ecocritics re-read major literary works from an ecocentric perspective, with particular

attention to the representation of the natural

world.


Ecocritics revalue nature writing which was marginalized before, e.g.Alfred Leopold’s SandCountry Almanac.

What do ecocritics do?

•What does ‘Nature’ represent in the work? •Can you interpret it within an ecocritical

framework?

•Which ‘image’ or ‘symbolic representation’ of nature does the author construct?


•How is culture related to nature?

•How do nature and human emotion relate to each other in the text? How does nature affect emotion?

•Are the values expressed in this text consistent with ecological wisdom?


•What is the relationship between humans and the environment in this text? Is the environment commodified?

•How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it?

•How has the concept of wilderness changed over time?


• In what ways and to what effect is the environmental crisis seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture?

•What role does nature and the landscape play here?

Terms you might come across:

Nature, nature writing, environment, environmentalism, environmental awareness, environmental consciousness, symbiosis, the wilderness, the scenic sublime, the countryside, the domestic picturesque, Anthropocentric (human-centered), light greens (environmentalists), dark greens (deep-ecologists), sustainable energy, ecological footprint, climate change, green living, going green, commodification, ecospirituality, ecofeminism, Pathetic fallacy, entropy

PPT Ecocritism

Documents

Transcript of PPT Ecocritism