Alaa Ahmed Saleh

Professor Mona Abd El- Hady

Literary Criticism

31 January 2024

Ecocriticism

Abstract: This paper traces the tangible existence of ecocriticism from the 18th century to

the present day. It signifies Carson‟s remarkable role in evolving ecocriticism. It traces the

significant role of Cheryll Glotfelty in developing the term ecocriticism, which was previously

known by many various names. It then presents the three waves of ecocriticism and the various

types of it: Pastoral, wilderness, ecofeminist, and postcolonial. The paper concludes by

highlighting the the importance of ecocriticism as a method for saving the world.

Ecocriticism is a new field that focuses on discussing works of literature

from an ecocritical point of view, aiming at discovering the environmental issues discussed

by the writers in their works. It can be defined as “the study of the relationship between literature

and physical environment” (Glotfelty 7). Ecocriticism is a broad spectrum and has many names:

Green Cultural Studies, Eco poetics and Environmental Literary Criticism. The foundation upon

which all branches of ecocriticism stand is the idea that human interactions with their natural

surroundings should contribute to the solution of the ecological crisis. It is obvious that the

Mother Nature and human life are strongly connected to a high extent, making it difficult for

human beings to separate themselves from the influence of nature. Human beings and the

environment are not independent entities, but rather elements of a broader framework in which

each one is significantly influenced by the acts of the other.

Throughout history, too many works had highlighted the relationship between human

beings and nature―for example, Homer‟s Odyssey, in which he described the Odysseus‟s

perilous journey through the Mediterranean Sea, giving an example of early conversion of the
nature as well as human routes. Additionally, Thomas Jefferson, an American philosopher,

in 1781 viewed the natural bridge in Virginia on the inside back cover of his book, Notes on the

State of Virginia, describing it as the “ most sublime of Nature's works” ( Jefferson 315). This

displays how people perceived nature's magnificence. There are three main characters who

portrayed their connection with the non-human nature, hence, providing the prototype for

ecological awareness which allowed many other writing in natural history to develop : William

Bartram, Alexander Wilson, and John James Audubon. During the early romantic time, the three

of them participated in the introduction of a new form of ecological perception in the American

culture by focusing on being part or member of one‟s own environment. William Bartram‟s

Travels (1791) is a visualization of a person who was deeply involved into the wild life in

America. He was overwhelmed by the exquisite beauty of the natural world and thought that

everything was an outcome of supernatural and unique artistry. Alexander Wilson was

influenced by the prettiness and variety of the American birds, spent most of his life studying

them. He was very dedicated that he travelled hundreds and hundreds of miles on his foot just to

discover new species of those birds in his outstanding American Ornithology (1808). His

contributions were not only scientific but also a concentration on the country's ethnicity. His

romantic poem “The Forests” in which he described his twelve hundred miles to Niagara Falls

was his method of revealing the beauty of wild nature in America. John James was just like

Wilson and Bartram and showed his love and affection for nature and the spectacular scenes in

the wildness, showing his influence by the romanticism. In the 19th century in UK there was a

great transition from the reasoning and focusing on facts to the romanticism which prevailed and

paved the way for ecocriticism as the writers embodied nature in their writing and used the

natural world around them as an inspiration and attaining enlightenment spiritually. William

Wordsworth was one of the great poets who helped the start of the romantic age. He pictured the

refinement and charmness of nature in his works including “Michael” (1800), showing the
affection of a farmer to the natural environment encircling him. “The Excursion” (1814) is a

visualization of the connection between nature and humans. His autobiographical poem “The

Prelude” (1850) showed his developing perception of nature. He identified nature as a living

thing with a purpose and sensations. Furthermore, there are more literary works which are

considered one of a kind in the nature poetry like those for Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron

and Percy Shelly who depended on the sensational description of nature. Shelly‟s “Ode to the

West Wind” is considered the English language's most imaginative lyrical poetry portraying

nature. The romantic passion with the natural world had a great importance for ecocriricism and

the innovative way of thinking for those poets was significantly helpful in preserving the

environment. John Claire, for example, used his knowledge in nature for showing his objection

against the new capitalist machinery and destroying the environment through industrialization.

In English authors' books, there was a huge importance for sense of place such as Mathew

Arnold‟s “Dover Beach” (1867), which was considered as the best descriptions of place in

English poetry. Mary Austin‟s The Land of Little Rain in 1903, made people see the desert with

another perspective. She managed to show her affection for unusual and uncommon places like

the desert in southern California as a consequence, people stopped perceiving desert as an

abandoned or threatening place. She emphasized the fact that in order to understand the human,

there must be a thorough understanding and studying of the environment around him which has a

great impact on his physical and mental state. She focused on the active connection between

human and the rest of environment around him. Aldo Leopold‟s A Sand County Almanac which

was published in 1949, confirmed that all the creatures have the right to live as non-doubtable

biological right( Mukhtar 4). These writings proved to us that ecocriticism is not a new concept

for humanity. It has always been there through decades; however, it came into light in recent

years. The emergence of ecocriticism started with Rachel Carson, a writer and scientist who

launched the environmental movements in the 1960s; she is the one who made ecocriticism.
Distinguishable. In 1962 she wrote her non-fictional book Silent Spring. The small book

discusses the risks associated with pesticides (particularly DDT) which contaminate water, air,

and soil, kill fish, birds, and other animals as well as invading our bodies and mutating cells

.Carson illustrates the idea of the book in the first chapter. She talks about an ideal environment

in which humans, animals, and plants coexist together in harmony; a place where people can

enjoy the sounds of birdsong and the arrival of the spring season. However, silence prevails

because of the overuse of chemical toxins. There is neither more birdsong nor spring beauty.

Carson concludes the chapter by pointing out that the careless application of chemical poisons

for bug control is a disastrous process. The purpose of her book is to educate the reader about

the nature of chemical poisons and how they impact the functioning of the world. This is shown

in the second chapter. Carson goes into great depth about many types of chemical poisons in

Chapter three, particularly those that are applied as insecticides. She describes how these poisons

multiply in fatty tissues and how they harm animals, birds or even human beings. As a result,

multiple diseases prevail including cancer, hepatitis, and liver disease. Death becomes an

unfortunate outcome. In chapter four, Carson explains to the reader the components of ecological

system, how they interact together, and how each component affects the other. Carson ends her

book with a conclusion chapter which is dedicated to find alternative methods for killing bugs.

She suggests cheap, rapid, and easy ways such as introducing the bug‟s natural enemies to

eliminate them. In the 1960s, Carson was already listed as one of the most influential people of that

decade. And in “Personalities of the Week: People and Events in the Public Eye,” a piece found

in The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, she was entitled as the “protector of nature

against chemicals.”(Illustrated London News 657). Carson‟s efforts were not merely theoretical;

however, her words encouraged people to take actual steps and try to save the environment. As a

result of her efforts, an article published in The Times in 1963 named „Danger in Misuse of

Pesticides‟ in which President Kennedy constituted an investigation for looking into Dr.
Carson's findings regarding the harmful effects of pesticides.( The Times 11). After a year,

another article published in The Times entitled „More Stringent Tests on U. S. Pesticides‟

(The Times 14), Reporting that in only two years after the book publication President Johnson

actually sat some regulations to increase the restrictions on the usage of pesticides. The ideas and

writings that emerged from this time eventually came to form the field of study that is today

called ecocriticism. Therefore, it is anticipated that while the individual, literary and cultural

experts have been creating ecologically informed theories and criticism since the early times,

they have not been able to unite into a distinct group. Their work has been placed under

numerous headings and is not acknowledged as being a part of a specific critical school or

movement and have been named with different names: “American Studies, regionalism,

pastoralism, the frontier, human ecology, science and literature, nature in literature, landscape in

literature, or the names of the authors treated” (Glotfelty 18).In 1989, during the Western

Literature Association meeting, Cheryll Glotfelty reintroduced the word "Ecocriticism" and

recommended its acceptance to refer to the scattered critical field, which was previously known

by many various names. 1992 witnessed the Western Literature Association's annual meeting

and it was decided to form the ASLE, a new association for the study of literature and

environment, having Sott Slovic chosen as its first president. The objective of ASLE was to

spread ideas and knowledge about literature that looked over the interaction between humans and

the natural world and to motivate, “new nature writing, traditional and innovative scholarly

approaches to environmental literature, and interdisciplinary environmental research” (Glotfelty

18). The official birth of ecocriticism can be traced back to two influential publications that came

out in the middle of the 1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold

Fromm and The Environmental Imagination by Lawrence Buell. Since ecocriticism's initial

concentration was limited to writing about nature, it was extremely restrictive. Later, when

ecocriticism gained popularity in the literary community, it started to incorporate a variety of

methodologies and cover a wide range of issues and approaches, “Under this broad and umbrella

term environmental literature, nature writing, deep ecology, the ecology of cities, the literature of

toxicity, environmental justice, bioregionalism, the lives of animals, the revaluation of place,

interdisciplinary eco-theory have been added”(Sumathy 3).

Ecocritical thinking is regarded as having gone through three waves. The first wave

focused on honoring the nature through literature. It emphasized writing about nature as both a

field of study and as a meaningful practice. Writers concentrated on highliting the dissimilarities

between humans and nature. By doing so they aimed at raising awareness of the value of nature.

Ecocriticism's first wave in America emerged from transcendentalists like “Ralph Waldo

Emerson (Nature), Henry David Thoreau (Walden), and Margret Fuller (Summer on the Lakes),

who focused on nature and wilderness in American context in their writings. The first wave

American ecocritics, following the transcendentalists, started to concentrate on the nature and

natural settings portrayed in the texts. The first British wave of ecocriticism, known as

Green Studies, came into being with the scholars focusing on English romantics such as William

Wordsworth and John Keats. Apart from Jonathan Bate, other ecocritics from the UK, who

contributed to the first wave ecocriticism in the UK were Lawrence Coupe, Richard Kerridge,

Greg Garrard and Terry Gifford” (Asenath et al 2). The second wave started in late 1990s. It

expanded on the first wave and increased the scope of environmentalism. Writers

concentrated on current environmental issues rather than the earlier wave of British and

American Ecocritics who praised the virtues of the pastoral setting. The second wave

ecocriticism is of paramount significance as it deviated from British and American literature to

include trans-cultural literatures. Some of the best works of this period were The Green Studies

Reader (2000) by Laurence Coupe and Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of

Ecocriticism and the Environmental Justice Reader by Karla Armbruster and Kathleen Wallace”

(Asenath et al 3). The second wave of ecocriticism expanded beyond nature writing to
encompass all forms of literature. It emphasized both human and ecological concerns. According

to second-wave ecocritics, the pastoral and wilderness environments were not the only places

where the term "environment" was used. For them, the word "environment" evolved to refer to

both urban and suburban environments. They didn't view humans and the environment as two

separate entities. Instead, they were thought to be dependent on each other. After 2000, a third

wave of ecocriticism began, however the term third wave wasn't applied to it until 2009. The

emergence of this third wave of ecocriticism is still very much in evidence today. “The first

wave abandoned the urban setting, the second wave included the urban setting, but the third

wave concentrated on building environment in urban setting” (Asenath et al 3). This change

prompted ecocritics to bring up additional issues, including gender bias, poverty, and racism

which made The third wave of ecocritics to combine environmental concerns with social and

eco-justice issues in their mindset.

Numerous varieties of eco-criticism have emerged and grown as the field has evolved.

Pastoral, wilderness, ecofeminist, and postcolonial are all different forms of ecocriticism.

Pastoral was found primarily in British and American literature. Pastoral literature typically

portrays an idealized rural environment. The genre compared the tranquility and peace of the

countryside with the mess and deterioration of urban life. Pastoral literature encourages people to

value and have a relationship with the natural world. Choosing the rural areas to live in was

perceived as a way to connect with nature. There was an idealization of nature life; however,

urban life was demonized. Pastoral ecocriticism is divided into three categories: American,

romantic, and classical. Classical is marked by nostalgia and the idea of nature as an ideal place

for reflection and meditation. But the idealization of rural independence is what defines

romanticism. The American branch promotes land as a resource that should be farmed and

encourages farming. Some criticism was directed toward the pastoral type due to its vision which

separates the rural and urban life. New approaches find this view as an outdated as new criticism
sees rural and urban lives as connected together and integral to create a better world. The study

of wilderness ecocriticism looks at how people value and interact with wilderness areas.

Wilderness ecocriticism is divided into two categories: Old World and New World. The

wilderness is portrayed in Old World as a dangerous, terrifying region that is outside the borders

of human civilization and as an area of isolation. On the other hand, similar to classical pastoral

ecocriticism, the New World presents the wilderness as a shelter where people might find peace

and mindfulness. The most prominent form of ecocriticism is feminist ecocriticism which tends

to relate the patriarchal subjugation of women to the subjugation of the natural world by

humans. According to some ecofeminists, women have a stronger bond with nature than males

because nature is basically feminine ,but new theories of ecofeminism consider this approach as

stereotyping. According to ecofeminism, patriarchal societies—especially those in the West—

neglect women and the environment in favor of industrialization and male interests which may

develop a sympathetic bond between women and the environment and encourage some of the

women to become more active in environmental issues. The last type is post-colonial

ecocriticism. In the past few decades, postcolonial ecocriticism has emerged as one of the major

types of ecocriticism. It emphasizes the various methods in which different countries and

cultures interact with their surrounding natural environment. It was found that people in

postcolonial nations are frequently observed to have more positive interactions with their natural

surroundings as they know the significance of each component in the ecosystem. On the

contrary, a great deal of people in Western nations believe that the natural world is only valuable

if it can fulfill a particular purpose for people. A live example is India, a postcolonial nation, is

probably going to be among the first nations to experience some of the worst effects of climate

change and it is already feeling the changes and the increasing rates of heat waves and drought.

This is all is a result of the horrible actions of the colonist. “When any region is colonized, it

means the whole environment is colonized. The environment begins to be manipulated by the
dominant power. Besides, land provides an identity to people who belong to the place. Hence,

any kind of intrusion in terms of power politics harms integrity of the culture and the

environment”(Afzal 10).

The ultimate purpose and target of ecocriticism is investigating the ethical implications of

the interaction of humans with nature, having the intentions of keeping and maintaining

the shrinking resources ( Mukhtar 1). The earth is plundered and destroyed as a result of

humankind's disproportionate and wasteful lifestyle and this lifestyle is threatening their own

existence. In Revaluing Nature: Towards An Ecological Criticism, Glen A. Love brilliantly takes

Arnold Toynbee‟s words:

mankind now has the power to make the biosphere uninhabitable, and that it will, in fact,

produce this suicidal result within a foreseeable period of time if the human population of

the globe does not now take prompt and vigorous concerted action to check the pollution

and the spoliation that are being inflicted upon the biosphere by short-sighted human

greed (225).

Earth's resources are limited, and the more that some of humankind utilizes, the less remains for

the rest of humanity and here comes the role of ecocriticism by focusing on the welfare of the

ecosystem. The world's most powerful countries now place little emphasis on protecting the

environment because protecting the environment is not helping imperialism's goals. The mindset

of imperialism views the environment as merely another resource to be used for power, and the

globe as something to be controlled. If the world is to survive, this cannot go on. It is not

sustainable. “Ecocriticism is an important step in bringing awareness to the environmental

problem that the world faces today, but it only works if more people learn about it. The only

way to change this mindset is to educate the world, and hopefully bring about a change in

values” (Sutariya 6). The survival of humans itself is now at risk in this world of ecological

destruction. It is now essential that each person make their own contribution in order to rescue
our planet Earth. Thus, one strategy used by humans to fight for the planet's survival is

ecocriticism which can be a powerful torch that can guide us through the darkness to a new

sunrise in a world where we give nature the respect it deserves.

 Works Cited

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Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

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Jefferson, Thomas, et al. Notes on the State of Virginia. Edited by William Peden, University of

North Carolina Press, 1955.

“Personalities of the Week: People and Events in the Public Eye.” Illustrated London News, 25

Apr. 1964, p. 657.

"Danger In Misuse Of Pesticides." Times, 16 May 1963, p. 11. The Times Digital

Archive.

“More Stringent Tests On U. S. Pesticides.” Times, 13 May 1964, p. 14. The Times

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Sumathy, U. Ecocriticism in Practice. New Delhi: Sarup Publishers, 2009. Print.

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Northern Iowa, 2017, https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd.

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