Ecocriticism : Where Literature And The Environment Meet

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Since time immemorial, works of literature have spoken of the exchanges between man and environment. The first work of global literature and of an international faith, the Holy Bible, records such interactions right from its first chapter in its first book - The Book of Genesis. Thus appears the first instruction through the book of God to man to protect the Earth that He created.

Genesis 1:26
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'"

The ancient Romans were known to worship the Earth. The Greeks did so too. From the soil which hosted life upon it sprung the many tales of mythological fantasy - the likes of which continue to inspire and influence the modern literary critic and contributor. Greek myths personified regular natural patterns like the wind and tide and considered them to be the work of Gods and Goddesses.

Several years later, with the passage of time and the need to be modern, the concern for the environment has decreased rapidly. Though this in itself is a reason for alarm, the action taken in response has been weak or in cases, even absent. Life forms are necessary to sustain a healthy environment, but a human interference in the pattern of food chains has disrupted this cycle. Any and all disruptions directly result in an ecological imbalance, which in turn, produces a domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem.

Of all the methods that man has tried to keep his experiences immortal, only culture has survived. Culture, unlike physical relics and tall monuments, passes down the generations in the form of oral literature, manuscripts and art, those which remain etched in human memory forever. As Helen Ocaya writes :

“From under the skies, 
a poet's literary remains 
forever shall remain. 
Eternal darkness in the earth beneath 
Shall sunlight a poet no more 
Creatures in the earth beneath 
desperate quests for fills. 
Of the poet's temporal, 
May they enjoy their fills. 
But the poet's thoughts, feelings, imaginations 
for ever shall remain.”
(A Poet Never Dies)

If Ocaya was not incorrect, the message of environmental sustainability would have passed down best through literature, down through the generations. 

The modern movement for environmentalism emerged in the late nineteenth century, losing pace soon after. It was reborn in the late 1960s in the avatar of new fictional and non fictional writings of the 20th century. However, the movement at that time was certainly not as strong as it turned into in the 1990s, when literature began to study the subject with much curiosity. The new genre thus developed was termed ecocriticism, which comfortably converged with its sister disciplines in the humanities: environmental history, anthropology and philosophy. The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) which was started to “inspire and promote intellectual work in the environmental humanities and arts”, now has chapters in all six continents to promote ecological sustainability. Beyond the ASLE however, literature has paid tribute to the environment in the works of some of our best known authors. Few critics disagree that the first significant work of ecocriticism was Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival, which earns its credit as a wonderful fusion of ecology and literary criticism. 

When ecocriticism finally emerged as a popular genre, the works that were read under its banner tended to equate the environment with nature, while the schools of literature that emerged subsequently embraced an approach that dealt more with the emergence of urbanisation. 

The scope of ecocriticism lies beyond the simple literary products of fact and fiction. In The Ecocriticism Reader, Glotfelty writes of ecocriticism as the “study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment". Simon Estok expanded the context to as early as the Shakespearean era, allotting the genre a broader dimension - of any work of art that dealt with nature and the environment. Ecocritics are expected to examine underlying ecological values, the truest meaning of the term ‘nature’ and whether the subject of ‘place’ should be a category, much like gender or creed. They study the human reaction and interaction with wilderness, focusing on its development with the passage of time. They have achieved this by further subdividing ecocriticism or environmental literature into smaller more accessible groups, such as pastoral literature, regionalism or human ecology. A brilliant example of a literary work, that falls under the subdivision of pastoral literature would be Raymond Williams’ 1973 book “The Country and The City”. 

Ecocriticism, which adopts a positive approach to the subject of environmental conservation, has naturally been critical of anthropocentrism, the biggest rival to geocentric awareness and sustainable survival. One of the most successful devices used in literature is satire, which not only manages to highlight follies, but also proceeds to mock them to make them embarrassing for the doer. This device has been accurately used against anthropocentrism in Joseph Meeker’s “The Comedy of Survival”, where he writes of the tragic conception of a hero whose moral struggles are more important than his mere biological survival. Meeker satirically draws to the conclusion that ‘making love’ is better than ‘making war’ for the ecological system.

In the year 1990, Glotfelty, of whom much has been mentioned earlier, was appointed as the first professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Nevada at Reno. A movement as it was, the interest in ecocriticism was soon popularised to the extent that the Western Literature Association listed it as a non - fiction genre, under the broader banner of “nature writing”. When one decides to ponder over what might possibly emerge under this category, it becomes obvious to prefer Estok’s views over those of other critics. It takes no effort to realise that anything from Wordsworth’s famous textbook poem “The Daffodils” to George Orwell’s socialist satire “The Animal Farm” could easily fit under the new banner of nature writing. In literature, after all, the only aspect that will ever matter is perspective and it ultimately lies in the opinion of the learned critic to refer to a literary work as one of ecocriticism and if its significance is in favour of the literary nature.