Introduction to the Theory of ecocriticism.ppt

Introduction to the theory of Ecocriticism

1. ECOCRITICISM

2. •Ecocriticism is a name that implies ecological
literacy. Eco and critic both derive from Greek,
oikos and kritis' and in tandem they mean
"house judge," (…)
•Ecocritic is "a person who judges the merits
and faults of writings that depict the effects of
culture upon nature, with a view toward
celebrating nature' berating its despoilers, and
reversing their harm through political action.”
(Howart 69)

3. There isn’t any correct and clear-cut
answer to the following questions:

4. •What is nature?
•Where is man’s place in nature?
•Does nature only exist for man’s needs?
•How can we define nature today considering
ecological disasters?
•What is the contribution of literature/literary
studies to ecology?

5. The Idea of ecocriticism appeared
owing to natural crises such as
•Pollution
•Global Warming
•Overpopulation
•Waste Disposal (+Nuclear)
•Climate Change
•Deforestation
•Ozone Layer Depletion

6. •Ecocriticism is the study of literature and
environment from an interdisciplinary point of
view where literature scholars analyze the
environment and brainstorm possible
solutions for the correction of the
contemporary environmental situation and
examine the various ways literature treats the
subject of nature.

7. •Ecocriticism is the youngest of the revisionist
movements that have influenced the
humanities over the past few decades. It was
only in the 1990s that it began to gain
momentum, first in the US and in the UK, as
more and more literary scholars began to ask
what their field has to contribute to our
understanding of the unfolding environmental
crisis.

8. •What is this new theory about? Ecocriticism
makes us re-evaluate every other kind of
criticism. Primarily, it contests theories of
language (more on that later) and puts a whole
new perspective on how to approach literary
works.
•One of the recognised pioneers of ecocriticism,
Cheryll Glotfelty, states that “Simply defined,
ecocriticism is the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical
environment”.

9. •Ecocriticism, as it now exists in the USA, takes
its literary bearings from the trancendentalist
19th century writers whose works celebrate
nature, the life force, and the wilderness such
as Ralph Waldo EMERSON, Margaret FULLER,
and Henry David THOREAU.

10. RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1803-1882)

11. •Emerson's first short book Nature ,published
in 1836 is reflective essay on the impact upon
him of the natural world, often voiced in
words of dramatic directness:
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at
twilight, under a clouded sky, without having
in my thoughts any occurenceof special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
I am glad to the brink of fear. (Emerson 38)

12. MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850)

13. •Margaret Fuller's first book was Summer on
the Lakes, During 1843 which is a powerfully
written journal of her encounter with the
American landscape at large, after a period as
the first woman student at Harvard. At
Niagara, for instance, she writes:

14. •For here there is no escape from the weight of
perpetual creation; all other forms and
motions come and go, the tide rises and
recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in
gales and gusts, but here is really an
incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake or
asleep, there is no escape, still this rushing
round you and through you. It is in this way I
have most felt grandeur -somewhat eternal, if
not infinite. (Fuller,71)

15. HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

16. •Thoreau'sWalden is an account of his two-
year stay, from 1845, in a hut he had built on
the shore of Walden Pond , Massachusetts. It
is the classic of account of dropping out of
modern life and seeking to renew the self by a
'return to nature'.
•Therefore, these three books of the
trancendentalistscan be seen the
foundational works of American Ecocriticism.

17. •By contrast, the UK version of ecocriticism, or green
studies takes its origin from the British Romanticism of
the 1790s rather than the American transcendentalism
of the 1840s.
•Generally, the preferred American term is Ecocriticism,
whereas 'green studies' is frequently used in UK, and
there is a tendency for the American writing to be
'celebratory' in tone, whereas the British variant tends
to be more minatory, that is, it seeks to warn us of
environmental threats emanating from governmental,
industrial and commercial forces

18. Major Figures in Ecocriticism
Cheryll Glotfelty
C. Glotfelty is the first professor of Literature
and Environment in the USA. In 1996 she and
Harold Fromm co-edited The Ecocriticism
Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, a
critical anthology that helped green the field
of literary studies.She is co-founder and past
president of the Association for the Study of
Literature and Environment (ASLE).

19. Lawrence Buell
As one of the founders of ecocriticism Lawrence
Buell has a lot of publications about nature and
literature. In his latest study, The Environmental
Imagination, Buell analyses the perception of
nature from Henry David Thoreau to
contemporary writers.

20. According to Lawrence Buell (1995, 7-8), an
environmentally oriented work should display the
following characteristics:
•The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a
framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest
that human history is implicated in natural history. [...]
•The human interest is not understood to be the only
legitimate interest. [...]
•Human accountability to the environment is part of
the text’s ethical framework. [...]
•Some sense of the environment as a process rather
than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the
text. [...]

21. Greg Garrard
•Greg Garrard is the FCCS Sustainability Professor at the
University of British Columbia, a National Teaching Fellow of
the British Higher Education Academy, and a founding
member and former Chair of the Association for the Study of
Literature and the Environment (UK & Ireland).
He is the author of Ecocriticism(Routledge 2004, 2011 2nd
ed) as well as numerous essays on eco-pedagogy, animal
studies and environmental criticism. He has recently edited
Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies(Palgrave
2011) andThe Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism(OUP 2014)
and become co-editor of Green Letters: Studies in
Ecocriticism.

22. Scott Slovic
•Scott Slovicserved as founding president of the Association
for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992
to 1995 and has edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment since 1995. The author
of many books and articles in the field, he is currently writing
Fundamentals of Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
and editing The Cambridge Companion to American Literature
and Environment, among other projects. He is professor of
literature and environment at the University of Idaho, USA.

23. •Scot Slovic prefers to offer a broad description
of the field:
“Ecocriticism is the study of explicitly
environmental texts from any scholarly
approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of
ecological implications and human-nature
relationships in any text, even texts that
seem, at first glance, oblivious of the
nonhuman world.”

24. Serpil Oppermann
•She is one of the Turkish contributors to the
development of ecocriticism. Oppermann
published many research articles about
ecocriticism and postmodernist English
literature. She is also the editor of the recently
published book, Material Ecocriticism.

25. •What are the characteristics of
Ecocriticism?

26. •Ecocriticism deals with the relationship
between culture and nature.
•Ecocritics reject the notion that everything is
socially or liguistically constructed.

27. •Let us look, then, at some provisional definitions of the
subject. It is from the ‘Introduction’to The Ecocriticism
Reader (1996), animportant anthology of American
ecocriticism:
What then is ecocriticism? Simply put, ecocriticism is the
study of therelationship between literature and the physical
environment. Justas feminist criticism examines language
and literature from a genderconscious perspective, and
Marxist criticism brings an awarenessof modes of
production and economic class to its reading of texts,
ecocriticism takes an earth-centred approach to literary
studies. (Glotfelty 1996: xix)

28. •Glotfelty goes on to specify some of the questions
ecocritics ask, rangingfrom ‘How is nature
represented in this sonnet?’through ‘How has
the concept of wilderness changed over time?’to
‘How is science itselfopen to literary analysis?’and
finally ‘What cross-fertilization is possible
between literary studies and environmental
discourse in related disciplinessuch as history,
philosophy, psychology, art history, and ethics?’
•Ecocriticism is, then, an avowedly political mode of
analysis, as thecomparison with feminism and
Marxism suggests.

29. •Richard Kerridge’s definition in the mainly British Writing the
Environment (1998) suggests, like Glotfelty’s, a broad cultural
ecocriticism:
The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and
representationswherever they appear, to see more clearly a
debate which seems to betaking place, often part-concealed,
in a great many cultural spaces.Most of all, ecocriticism seeks
to evaluate texts and ideas in terms oftheir coherence and
usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.
(1998: 5)

30. •Ecocriticism is against the old established definition of nature.
Therefore, ecocriticism puts forth the idea that man is not
master of the nature. It is not a slave as well.
Ecocritical literary criticism points out the importance of
re-reading major literary texts in order to subvert our
antropocentric view of the world.
They also put emphasis on the relationship among man,
culture and nature. Ecocritics also discuss this relationship by
using the concepts and terms of philosophy and biology. By
doing so, they create an ecological consciousness and
compose an ecological ethics.

31. First Wave Ecocriticism (1970-1990)
ManNature
•Ecocriticism’s first wave, rooted in deep
ecology, tended to see nature and human
beings as opposed to one another, and held
that the proper response of environmental
criticism should be to help protect the natural
environment from the depredations of human
culture.

32. The Second Wave Ecocriticism (1990-2000)
Man=Nature
•Second wave ecocriticism which addressed itself to human
concerns as well as nonhuman nature: to urban and suburban
environments as well as to wilderness settings; and to all
types of literary texts, not just nature writing.
•Prompted by dialogue with the environmental justice
movement, second-wave literary critics no longer saw human
beings and the environment as opposed to one another, but
instead focused on the ways in which they were independent
and mutually constitutive.

33. The 3rd Wave Ecocriticism (2000-)
ManNature
•The 3rd wave of ecocriticism will continue to build on
the development in the 2nd wave: deconstructing
the inherited opposition of ‘nature’ and the ‘human’
in which the former is priviledged and the latter is
denigrated: exploring the social, economic and
physical dimensions of environmental process.
•The third wave also will examine ‘environmentality’
as a key tribute of all texts rather than ‘nature
writing’.

34. •In addition, the 3rd wave ecocritics claim that
ecocriticism is a multidisciplinary research
field and they propose miscellaneous research
topics as:
•Ecofeminism Ecomarxism
•Eco(post)colonialism Ecocinema
•Posthumanism&ecocriticsmEcotheatre
•Animal Studies Ecopedagogy

35. KEY CONCEPTS

36. •Anthropocentrism: the assumption or view that the interest
of humans are of higher priority than those of non-humans.
Often used as an antonym for biocentrism orecocentrism.It
coversa multitude of possible positions, from positive
conviction (stronganthropocentrism) that human interests
should prevail, to the belief that zero-degree
anthropocentrism is not feasible or desirable (weak
anthropocentrism).
•So it is entirely possible without hypocrisy to
maintainbiocentricvalues in principle while recognizing that
in practice must be constrained byanthropocentric
considerations, whether as a matter of strategy or as a matter
of intractable self-interestedness.

37. •Biocentrism: the view that all organisms, including
humans, are part of a larger biotic web or network or
community whose interests must constrain or direct
the human interest. Used as a semi-synonym for
ecocentrism and in antithesis to anthropocentrism.

38. •Ecocentrism: the view in environmental ethics that the
interest of the ecosphere must override that of the interest of
individual species. Used like the semi-synonymous
biocentrism in antithesis to anthropocentrism, but whereas
biocentrism refers specifically to the world of
organisms,ecocentrism points to the interlinkage of the
organismal and the inanimate.

39. •Ecocentrism covers a range of possible specific
ecophilosophies.In general, ecocentrists hold that
‘the world is an intrinsically dynamic,
interconnected web of relations”with “no absolute
dividing lines between the living and the nonliving,
the animate and the inanimate”.The origins of
modern ecocentric ethics are traceable toAldo
Leopold, inventor of the “land ethic,”which
enlarges the boundaries of the community to include
soils, waters, plants and animals”(Leopold, 1949).

40. Phasesof natureas follows:
•Area one: 'the wilderness' (e.g. deserts, oceans,
uninhabited continents)
•Area two : 'the scenic sublime' (e.g. forests, lakes,
mountains, cliffs, waterfalls)
•Area three: 'the countryside' (e.g. hills, fields,
woods)
•Area four: 'the domestic picturesque'(e.g. parks,
gardens,lanes)

41. What ecocritics do
•They re-read major literary works from an ecocentric
perspective, with particular attention to the representation of
the natural world.
•They extend the applicability of the range of ecocentric
concepts, using them of things other than the natural world-
concepts such as growth and energy, balance and imbalance,
symbiosis and mutuality, and sustainable and unsustainable
uses of energy and resources.
•They give special emphasis to writers who foreground nature
as a major part of their subject matter, such as the American
transcendentalist, the British Romantics.

42. •They extend the range of literary-critical practice
by placing a new emphasis on 'factual' writing
(Topographical) such as essays, travel writing,
memoirs and regional literature.
•They turn away from the 'social constructivism'
and 'linguistic determinism' of dominant literary
theories and emphasize ecocentricvalues,
collective ethical responsibility, and the claims of
the world beyond ourselves.

43. Questionsfor Basic Ecocritical Reading
•How is nature represented in this sonnet?
•What role does the physical setting play in the plot
of this novel?
•Are the values expressed in this play consistent
with ecological wisdom?
•How do our metaphors of the land influence the
way we treat it?
•How can we characterize nature writing as a
genre?”(Glotfelty xviii-xix)

44. •The Garden Party by Katherine MANSFIELD
AND AFTER all the weather was ideal. They could not have
had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered
it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was
veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimees in early
summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the
lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat
rosetttes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine.
As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood
that roses are the only flowers that everybody is certain of
knowing.Hundreds, yes literally, hundreds, had come out in a
single night (…)

45. •The story begins with a positive description of nature. The
narrator tries to focus on the physical environment, and its
favourable effects on people. However, it is possible to
conclude from the extract that Mansfield has an
antropocentric point of view in terms of ecocritical theory
because she prefers to create a garden as a domestic
picturesque. Namely, the writer illustrates man’s endeavour to
change nature for his own purposes by describing the
gardener’s efforts. Therefore, she glorifies man’s supremacy
over the nature by separating man and nature. However, the
garden should be read as a shelter created by man against
nature in which he can only make small changes from the
ecocritical perspective.
To sum up, Mansfield’s Garden Party implies the commonly
accepted antropocentric view of man about nature.

46. Daffodils by W. Wordsworth
•I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

47. •The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.