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Chapter II Roots of Ecocriticism The study of literature has long been preoccupied with historical approaches. However, in recent years critics are increasingly aware of the relation between literature and geography, and drawing insights from the mutual study of these two fields. Nature and literature have always shared a close relationship as is evidenced in the works of poets and other writers down the ages in almost all cultures of the world. Today the intimate relationship between the natural and social world is being analyzed and emphasized in all departments of knowledge and development. The literary critic tries to study how this close relationship between nature and society has been textualized by the writers in their works. In this context two terms have become very important today – ‗ecology‘ and ‗ecocriticism‘. The two components of nature, organisms and their environment are not only much complex and dynamic but also interdependent, mutually reactive and interrelated. Ecology, relatively a new science, deals with the various principles which govern such relationships between organisms and environment. Today, ecology is defined as the way in which plants, animals and people are related to each other and their environment. In this relationship they are so much interdependent on each other that any disturbance in one disturbs the other. History has proved this every now and then that with every change in the civilisation the relationship of animals and human beings have also changed and the effect on civilisation of the changes in environment has been so acute that sometimes it has wiped the whole civilisation from the face of the earth. Therefore, concern for Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. ecology is one of the most discussed issues today. It is the concern of every country to replenish the diminishing factors of ecology which threatens human beings the most. Literature well known for reflecting the contemporary issues could not have remained unaffected from this theme. The world of literature throngs with works dealing with beauty and power of nature. However, the concern for ecology and the threat that the continuous misuse of our environment poses on humanity have only recently caught the attention of the writers. It is this sense of concern and its reflection in literature that have given rise to a new branch of literary theory, namely Ecocriticism. There have also been numerous debates on whether to include human culture in the physical world. Despite the broad scope of inquiry all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it. Dr. Mark C. Long in an interview found on OSLE India‘s Newsletter, in this context, first differentiates between ecology and environment. He says that ecology is mostly used by humanists as a metaphor for describing the natural world. In this sense, ‗ecology‘ is a way of thinking about nature. ‗Environment‘, on the other hand, he considers as a more inclusive term that describes the natural and human world. He says ―I use the term ‗environmental writing‘ more than ‗nature writing‘ because I am interested in writers concerned with natural as well as cultural experience‖ (OSLE India Newsletter 3). The view that culture is produced by human beings and is therefore separate from nature bypasses the fact that all human culture resides in the natural world. The human beings owe our very existence to its processes. Therefore, our every action toward the natural world is eventually an action toward oneself and toward one‘s culture. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Its practitioners explore human attitudes toward the environment as expressed in nature writing. It is a broad genre that is known by many names like green cultural studies, ecopoetics and environmental literary criticism, which are some popular names for this relatively new branch of literary criticism. Literary criticism in general examines the relations between writers, texts and ―the world‖. In most literary theory ―the world‖ is synonymous with society--- the social sphere. Ecocriticism expands the notion of ―the world‖ to include the entire ecosphere. Ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary criticism. Ecocritics and theorists are concerned with the questions like if the nature is being represented in a piece of literature or if the physical setting has a role in the plot or if the values expressed in the work are consistent with the ecological wisdom or if in addition to race, class, gender and place should become a new critical category and in what ways and to what effect the environment crisis is seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture. Literary scholars specialise in questions of value, meaning, tradition, point of view, tradition and language and it is in these areas that we are making a substantial contribution to environmental thinking. Ecocriticism has come to mean not only the application of ecology and ecological principles to the study of literature, but also the theoretical approach to the interrelational web of natural cultural and supernatural phenomena. It began to explore constructions of environment in literary texts and theoretical discourse. Most ecological work shares a common motivation, that is, the awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when the consequences of human actions are damaging the planet‘s basic life support system. This awareness brings in us a desire to contribute to environmental Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. restoration, not only as a hobby but as a representative of literature. Ecocritics encourage others to think seriously about the aesthetic and ethical dilemmas posed by the environmental crisis and about how language and literature transmit values with profound ecological implications. Ecocriticism is the central focus of this research. The considerable increase in the emergence of Ecoconscious writers in the post-modern era has paved a path for a new kind of critical approach called Ecocriticism. It is a fairly recent but rapidly developing concept in the area of Literary Criticism. It has emerged as a modern ecological literary study and is now acknowledged as a vital critical approach. Ecocriticism not only gives emphasis on the ‗harmony‘ of humanity and nature but also talks about the destruction caused to nature by the changes which take place in the modern world for most of which man is directly responsible. O. J. Joycee and Evangeline Manickam in an article, From Ego- centered to Eco-centered Humanism: A Wilburian Perspective in The Atlantic Literary Review opine as follows: Ecocriticism anticipates a response to the need for humanistic understanding with the natural world in an age of environmental destruction. The war- ravaged Twentieth Century catapulted attention to the environment and since then there has been no dearth of theories and movements. Our understanding of nature is at odds with another, and there is no definitive way to judge which one is better… Nature is, therefore, an idea that takes on different meanings in different cultural contexts. (75) Ecocriticism gives a new meaning to place, setting, and environment. Ecocritics in their study wanted an ecological perception of nature to change the ways humans inhabit the Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Earth. Loretta Johnson in her essay Greening the library: The Fundamentals and Future of Ecocriticism poses a variety of questions like, ―Would a shift toward an ecological perception of nature change the ways humans inhabit the Earth? Do authors impute certain values and make assumptions when they present the environment and nonhuman life in their works? How does one avoid binary oppositions, or should one perceive human nature in an I/it or I/thou relationship?‖ <http://www.asle.org/assets/docs/Ecocriticism_essay.pdf>. Ecocriticism is a rapidly changing theoretical approach, which is different from the traditional approach to literature. Here the critic explores the local or global, the material or physical, or the historical or natural history in the context of a work of art. An ecocritical approach to literature is often interdisciplinary, citing knowledge of environmental studies, the natural sciences, and cultural and social studies. Johnson further explains thus: ―Eco‖,from the Greek root oikos, means ―house‖… Just as ―economy‖ is the management or law of the house (nomos = law), ―ecology‖ is the study of the house. Ecocriticism, then, is the criticism of the ―house,‖ i.e., the environment, as represented in literature. But the definition of ―house,‖ or oikos, is not simple. Questions remain: What is the environment? What is nature? Why did the term ―environment,‖ which derives from the verb ―to environ or surround,‖ change to mean that which is nonhuman? Are not humans natural and a prominent environment in themselves? Where and in what does one live? Ecocriticism is by nature interdisciplinary, invoking Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. knowledge of environmental studies, the natural sciences, and cultural and social studies, all of which play a part in answering the questions it poses. <http://www.asle.org/assets/docs/Ecocriticism_essay.pdf> Since 1990, ecocriticism has flourished. Today, a keyword search for ―ecocriticism‖ in the MLA Bibliography online produces 422 hits, three-quarters of which are from the last eight years. Ecocriticism has entered academic course lists worldwide, along with the creation of interdisciplinary academic faculty positions to teach them. Peter Barry added a chapter titled ―Ecocriticism‖ to the second edition of his Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, but correctly claims that ecocriticism has no universal model. The essay focuses exclusively on the new practice in this area and includes only the most important works on the relationship between culture and nature relative to ecocriticism. Accordingly, he lists ―what ecocritics do,‖ which includes the following: They re-read major literary works from a major ecocentric perspective, with particular attention to the representation of the natural world. They extend the applicability of a range of ecocentric concepts, using them of other things in the natural world-concepts such as growth and energy, balance and imbalance, symbiosis and mutuality, and sustainable or unsustainable uses of energy and resources… they turn away from the ‗social constructivism‘ and ‗linguistic determinism‘ of dominant literary theories and instead emphasize ecocentric values of meticulous Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. observation, collective ethical responsibility, and the claims of the world beyond ourselves. (Barry 254) Glen Love in his Practical Ecocriticism answers the question of ―Why Ecocriticism is important in today‘s world?‖ He says these words: As the circumstances of the natural world intrude ever more pressingly into our teaching and writing, the need to consider the interconnections, the implicit dialogue between the text and the environmental surroundings, becomes more and more insistent. Ecocriticism is developing as an explicit critical response to this unheard dialogue and attempts to raise it to a higher level of human consciousness. Teaching and studying literature without reference to the natural conditions of the world and the basic ecological principles that underlie all life seems increasingly short – sighted, incongruous. (Love 18) Some ecocritics date the birth of the word ―ecocriticism‖ to William Rueckert, who in a 1978 essay titled ―Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism‖ wrote that ecocriticism entailed ―application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xx) which is included in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology by Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. This text remains a benchmark text in the field because of the passion of its contributors, its scholarly breadth and depth, and the diversity of its essays. In a 1989 Western Literature Association meeting, Glotfelty had urged literary critics to develop an ecological approach to literature, one that would focus on the cultural dimensions of humans‘ Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. relationship to the environment. At the same meeting, Glen Love delivered a speech titled ―Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Literary Criticism,‖ and Glotfelty and Fromm included that text in their volume. Over the last three decades, Ecocriticism has emerged as a field of literary study that addresses how humans relate to non- human nature or the environment in literature. Today, with the development and expansion of ecocritical studies, any line between human and non- human nature has necessarily blurred. So when subjected to Ecocriticism, literature of all periods and places—not only ecocentric or environmental literature or nature writing, but all literature is viewed in terms of place, setting, and environment. Glotfelty's working definition in The Ecocriticism Reader is as follows: Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender- conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of its texts, eco criticism takes an earth centered approach to literary studies. (Glotfelty and Fromm xviii) Ecocriticism is inherently interdisciplinary. Ecocriticism is most appropriately applied to a work in which the landscape itself is a dominant character, when a significant interaction occurs between author and place, character and place. Landscape by definition includes the non-human elements of place--the rocks, soil, trees, plants, rivers, animals, air--as well as human perceptions and modifications. How an author sees and describes these elements relates to geological, botanical, zoological, meteorological, ecological, as Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. well as aesthetic, social, and psychological considerations. And then there is the historical vantage point. As Thoreau once wrote, there can be no history but natural history--if one believes that by ―nature‖ we mean the human as well as non-human world. <http://www.asle.org/site/resources/ecocritical-library/intro/defining/scheese/> Ecocritics ask several questions on the relationship between environment and literature but one question seems to be the most important. Literary ecocriticism offers an ecological interpretation of texts. Cheryl Glotfelty says that: ―Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xviii). She lists a number of questions which could be asked by literary ecocritics like ―How is nature represented in this sonnet?‖ and ―What crossfertilization is possible between literary studies and environmental discourse in related disciplines such as history, philosophy, psychology, art history and ethics?‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xix). They also point to the central concern of culture in ecocriticism: Despite the broad scope of inquiry and disparate levels of sophistication, all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it. Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artefacts of language and literature. As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the non-human. (xviii) The author elaborates upon the term ‗Ecocriticism‘ and provides us with his twin explanation of the same. Jonathan Bate expresses the same idea as Glotfelty more briefly: A central question in environmental ethics is whether to regard humankind as part of nature or apart from nature. It is the task of literary ecocriticism to address a local version of that question: what is the place of creative imagining and writing in the complex set of relationships between humankind and environment, between mind and world, between thinking, being and dwelling? (8) The term ‗Ecocriticism‘ (Greek oikos and kritis) is interpreted to mean ‗house judge‘ by William Howarth. He says: ―the oikos is nature, a place Edward Hoagland calls ‗our widest home,‘ and the kritos is an arbiter of taste‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm 69). For him, ―criticism judges the quality and integrity of works and promotes their dissemination‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm 71). He claims the four disciplines of ecology, ethics, language and criticism are essential for the reading of nature writing: To me they offer combinations of theory and method that explore environmental literature. As an interdisciplinary science, ecology describes the relations between nature and culture. The applied philosophy of ethics offers ways to mediate historic social conflicts. Language theory examines how words represent human and nonhuman life. Criticism judges the quality and integrity of works and promotes their Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. dissemination. Each discipline stresses the relations of nature and literature as shifting, moving shapes – a house in progress, perhaps, unfinished and standing in a field. (Glotfelty and Fromm 71) For Howarth the aim of ecocriticism should be ―to redirect humanistic ideology, not spurning the natural sciences but using their ideas to sustain viable readings‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm 78). Thus the working definition of literary ecocriticism is the analysis of literature‘s expression of humanity‘s place on Earth, our oikos or home. This wholly includes the cultural aspect through literature and the biological aspect through the Earth as our ecosystem. Karl Kroeber in Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind points to the importance of this intersection between the cultural and the biological: An ecologically oriented criticism directs itself to understanding persistent romantic struggles to articulate meaningful human relations within the conditions of a natural world in which transcendence is not an issue. Such criticism does not dismiss the copious evidence of romantic claims that imaginative consciousness fulfils, rather than contravenes, the dynamic tendencies of natural life. Ecologically oriented criticism thus recognizes a foreshadowing of its own understanding of humanity‘s relation to nature in the romantic view that it is natural for human beings to be selfconscious, and natural, therefore, to construct their cultures out of complexly inter assimilative engagements with their physical and biological environment. (38-9) Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. The term ‗Ecocriticism‘ is a short form of ecological literary criticism. The tendency to drop the reference to literature distorts the full ecological implication of the discipline. Kroeber like Howarth, points to the linking function of literary ecocriticism between humanism and science and calls the Romantic poets ―proto-ecological‖ because they accepted ―a natural environment existent outside of one‘s personal psyche‖ (Kroeber 19). Kroeber admits that scientific procedures help us to understand the natural environment because science orders external reality. But, he adds, this external reality can only be fully appreciated through ―imaginative acts of mind‖ (19). According to Glen Love Ecocriticism focuses on the ―inter connections between the material world and human culture, specifically the cultural artifacts language and literature‖ (196). Robert Kern in his essay ―Ecocriticism: What is it good for?‖ found in The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism, 1993-2003 aptly observes thus: What ecocriticism calls for, then, is a fundamental shift from one context of reading to another- more specifically, a movement from the human to the environmental, or at least from the exclusively human to the biocentric or ecocentric, which is to say a humanism (since we cannot evade our human status or identity) informed by an awareness of the ‗more- than – human. (Branch and Slovic 267) Ecocriticism regards nature as an autonomous, active entity of its own and so can be used as an important tool in interpreting literary texts that represent the relationship of human beings to their natural environment. As man moved from science to modern technology nature became the ―Other‖. All that is not man came to be called as nature. O. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. J. Joycee and Evangeline Manickam in an article, From Ego- centered to Eco-centered Humanism: A Wilburian Perspective in The Atlantic Literary Review utter these words: Cultural anthropologists like Levi –Strauss distinguish nature and culture by stating that which is universal and spontaneous and not dependent on any particular culture, or any determinate form, belongs to nature. Inversely that which depends upon a system of norms regulating society and therefore is capable of varying from one social structure to another belongs to culture. This ―no-culture‖ of nature may itself be considered a culture, for nature is not an abstraction or an idea as the post – modernists would like us to believe, nor is it mere physical entity, but a living presence of which the human race constitute a significant part. (76) Ecocritics can initiate change, as Lawrence Buell believes, ―admittedly nothing is more shocking for many humanists than to find their ideas taken seriously. But it might just happen in this case. That self- identified Ecocritics tend to be folk who seriously entertain that possibility is one reason why the best ecocritical work is so strange, timely, and intriguing‖(Buell 710). Christa Grewe – Volpp in the article, Nature ―out there‖ and as ―a social player‖ found in Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies says that, ―As culture is understood to be embedded in nature and as nature is always culturally inscribed, culture can no longer deem itself superior to nature. It must instead respect the implications and consequences of its embeddedness‖ (Gersdoff and Mayer 81). Grewe further explains thus: Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. Nature in each case responded and responds to human interference. As an autonomous actor it can no longer be depicted as a mere setting, but becomes a protagonist capable of articulation… The land, for example, is more generally, a place, subtly or explicitly influences the psyche and the actual behaviour of individual protagonists. Climate, wilderness condition, technologically altered landscapes, topographies and many other environmental elements- never as pristine nature, never as mere text – function as a powerful force that human beings have to – and do – react to. (78) Arthur Lovejoy‘s contribution in this field is also very eminent. He observes that one of the strangest, most potent and most persistent factors in the western thought is the use of the term ‗nature‘ to express the standard of human values, the identification of the good with that which is ‗natural‘ or ‗according to nature‘. Nature has always proved to be stronger than human. It has often shown its power by controlling manpower through natural calamities like famine, drought, flood, earthquake etc. Human‘s life and nature are so interlinked that it is not possible for human beings to separate themselves from its influence. Therefore they have no choice but to accept both nature‘s bounty and adversity. This can be said to be reciprocal as nature too is the recipient of human‘s action. Our irresponsible actions cause irreparable damages to nature. This is how the chain of ecosystem works in which everything is related to each other and therefore affects each other. However, even with a term that defined a new group of writing, Cheryl Glotfelty‘s The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology published in Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. 1996 adeptly narrowed the term in spite of a ―postmodern age [that] exist[s] in a constant state of flux‖ as ―the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xviii). The distinction between environmental writing and ecocritical writing is critical to an understanding of ecocriticism. Glotfelty notes that ―environmental writing supports a dualism that asserts nature as totally separate from humanity, while ecocritical writing unifies the two, or at least analyzes the relationship between them‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xx). An ecocritical approach views human‘s relationship with nature by his interaction with nature because it supports the idea that nature, as a literary subject, surrounds all parts of life. Suresh Frederick rightly says that, ―Ecocriticism gives human beings a better understanding of nature‖ (134). Ecocriticism is a necessary part of literary scholarship because literature cannot separate characters from nature and that they domesticate either destructively or productively. Foundational to this study of work in nature is Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s definition of nature and art and his argument about what it means to be whole through work in nature. In his essay, ―Nature”, Emerson defines nature as ―essences unchanged by man,‖ and art as a ―mixture of [man‘s] will with [what is unchanged by man]‖ (Slater 3). Thus, employing nature as a subject of literary study should address human will in nature. Emerson acknowledges that environmental problems arise because of man‘s ―resumption of power‖ and that ―[t]he problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty. . . is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye‖ (Slater 45). Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. One of the most important ecocritical concepts that is used for the interpretation of a work of art by ecocritics today is cultural geography. In literature importance is given to the geographical background and it very much depends upon the lives of the people and their environment. The two major branches of Geography are Physical Geography and Cultural Geography. The latter can also be defined as Human Geography which is the study of many cultural aspects found throughout the world. It also deals with how culture relates to the different spaces and places. The interest of geographers in cultural problems developed early, but the cultural approach was deeply modernized during the last 20 years. The main cultural phenomena studied in cultural geography are the language of the people, their religion, their economic status, art, music and other cultural aspects. The study of these aspects helps to explain why people behave the way they do in the particular environment in which they live in. These aspects of culture are able to travel across the world due to globalization. This chapter deals with the Cultural Geography of Ireland and how it is incorporated in the plays of Synge. G.S. Mohanty in Social and Cultural Geography expounds in his Preface thus: Geography, in simplest terms, is about locations, places, how people and their cultures interact with their environments, how goods, services and ideas move across space, and how dividing the world into regions can help us understand it all. Social and cultural geography is about how people, as individuals and as members of groups, create places and landscapes for their daily lives; how people understand places, regions, and spatial relationships; how places and landscapes are cumulative through time: Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. how places and landscapes are part of larger regional and global systems, and how human societies and nature interact to create the diversity of the humanized world. (vii) In the studies on cultural geography, developed in the first half of our century, some geographers focus their analyses on the material productions and expressions of culture: artefacts, housing, food; the way they are named and spoken of; discourses and texts; works of art. Though nature has been the subject of the works of many writers it has been recognized as a separate field of study very recently. In simple terms what was the study of nature in olden days has now been termed as literary geography. Wagner in his cultural traditions says that the study of Cultural geography can help to analyse and attack the human problems in our own societies that attach to race and poverty, age and gender, ethnicity and alienation. Spatial imagination, historical awareness, cultural sensitivity and ecological insight, as well as that observational gift upon which fieldwork depends, can all play a part in rendering service, and committed engagement will enrich our vision as well. (8) Before delving deeper into cultural geography it is only appropriate on the part of the researcher to discuss the two terms ‗nature‘ and ‗culture ‗which form a major part of the study of cultural geography. Raymond Williams in his essay ―Nature‖ in the Cultural Geography Reader says as follows: Indeed one of the most powerful uses of nature, since the late eighteenth century, has been in this selective sense of goodness Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. and innocence. Nature has meant the ‗countryside‘, the ‗unspoiled places‘, plants and creatures other than man. The use is especially current in contrasts between town and country: nature is what man has not made, though if he made it long enough ago – a hedgerow or a desert – it will usually be included as natural. (Oaks and Price 211) As William says nature is something that is there for man to enjoy, experience and use but he does not have the power to create nature. Williams further explains that though nature is one of the most complex words in the language it ―is relatively easy to distinguish three areas of meaning: (i) the essential quality and character of something; (ii) the inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both; (iii) the material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings‖ (Oaks and Price 208). The next most complex term in the English language is ‗Culture‘. The answer to the question, ‗What is culture?‘ is very complicated. Williams answers this in his other essay Culture also found in Cultural Geography Reader. According to Williams ―Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language… The immediate forerunner is cultura [Latin], from the Latin root word colere. Colere has a range of meanings: inhabit, cultivate, protect, honour with worship‖ (Oaks and Price 18). Williams explains that the primary meaning was husbandry which is the tending of natural growth and culture is manifested through music, literature, painting, theatre and film. Culture is a learned behaviour says, William Sewell. Jr. in Concepts of Culture found in the Cultural Geography Reader. He interprets ―Culture as learned behaviour. Culture in this sense is the whole body of practices, beliefs, institutions, customs, habits, Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. myths, and so on built up by humans and passed on from generation to generation. In this usage, culture is contrasted to nature; its possession is what distinguishes us from other animals‖ (Oaks and Price 43). Another important theme which comes under cultural geography is the study of landscape. Landscape is a very complex term which has a number of meanings and interpretation. Though many have a clear image of the word landscape, defining the term is not so simple. Descriptions of a landscape will be the same but what that particular landscape means to them will definitely vary from person to person. Landscapes reflected also the habits, customs and values of those who shaped them. The inhabitant of a region will look at his landscape differently from a tourist who is just passing by. The perception of a painter or a philosopher will definitely be different from that that of a geographer. Langton in Homeland: Sacred Visions and the Settler State feels that ―Land and landscapes shared by settlers and indigenes are divergently imagined, whereas settlers see an empty wilderness, aboriginal people see a busy spiritual landscape, peopled by ancestors and the evidence of their creative feats‖ (Adams and Robins, 16). Landscape is not an independent composition. It reflects the conflicts which destroy the society which creates or inhabits it. Landscape, either the one which is painted or the one which is shaped, is a creation where views over society are expressed through transformations imposed upon nature. In the world of geography there is more than one term for the word ‗landscape‘ and it is a large mixture of many definitions put together. Obviously landscape has to do with the surface of the earth and it is frequently taken as a visual medium in literature and paintings. However during the seventeenth century Meining, in Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes found in Conzen‘s Cultural Landscape in Geography comments ―Landscape is related to but not identical with nature; it is a scene, but not identical with scenery; it is around us, but not identical with environment; related to but not identical with place, and related to but not identical with region, area, or geography‖ (3087). Landscapes reflect a society‘s culture and Cultural Landscape is the common geographers‘ term for ―perspective on the location of humans, their resources, significant geographic landmarks, socio-economic status, belief systems, and why they evolved to what they are today‖. The Geographer who first used the term Cultural Landscape as an academic term in the early 20th century is Otto Schluter. He defined two forms of landscape: ―the ‗original landscape‘ or landscape that existed before major human induced changes and the‘ cultural landscape' a landscape created by human culture. The major task of geography was to trace the changes in these two landscapes‖. Cultural landscapes are reflective of human and natural transformations to landscapes. ―They hold different meanings to diverse groups of people, each of which hold within their relative culture, varying attitudes towards landscapes‖ (Duncan, Johnson and Schein 92). Rubenstein stated that, ―A distinctive landscape results from the characteristics of a particular culture, including beliefs, social structures, and material capabilities. The impact of humans on the landscape changes over time and differs from one region to another‖ (Rubenstein 36). Cultural geographers recognise that the cultural landscape is an ongoing process, and not static. Rubenstein‘s book The Cultural Landscape outlined analogies between Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. what the cultural landscape represents in theory with every day examples of living within our communities. He described ―the deep entrenchment of cultural beliefs within different groups of people and how these distinctive beliefs come to dominate transformations to landscapes‖ (Rubenstein 36). Emerson writes of nature by saying that, ―We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its old home‖ (Slater 325). He also poignantly notes that ―[c]ities give not the human senses room enough‖ (Slater 325), which suggests that a rural life allows man room to fully and wholly love, to form relationship with the land, and to be at home in it. If farming is one of man‘s ―natural capacities,‖ then its work must accomplish something or work toward something greater than himself. Therefore, one new function of ecocriticism is to seek out literature that portrays particular values and beliefs toward the unity between the environment and man. Another function is for ecocritical writers oftentimes to focus on nature for nature‘s sake and excommunicate human action as a part of that nature. Finally, in the twenty-first century, a number of authors are creating works that attempt to resolve, or at best explore, the dichotomy between nature and man through conservation. Glotfelty‘s foundational definition of ecocriticism is that ―ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specially the cultural attitude of language and literature‖ (Glotfelty and Fromm xx). She defines this connection in ecocritical writing as a widening discussion of the ―social sphere‖ to the ―entire ecosphere‖ in which ―ideas‖ interact as a part of a ―global system‖ (xix). Thus, literature becomes an avenue for an expressiveness of nature that does not leave out Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark. culture. Nature is a place of existence where living organisms flourish, wither, and die; like nature, a person‘s interaction with the environment also reveals his or her own development on earth. To sum up, as a distinctive approach to the practice of literary criticism, ecocriticism gives increased attention to literary representatives of nature and is sensitive to interdependencies that ground the author, character or work in the natural system. This approach shifts critical focus from social relations toward natural relationships and views the individual as a member of ecosystem. It values highly the ‗literary sense of place‘ not as setting but as an essential expression of bonding with or alienation from a specific natural context. From the beginning the writers have shown interest towards nature, culture and landscape. An ecocritical approach views man‘s relationship with nature by his interaction with nature because it supports the idea that nature, as a literary subject, surrounds all parts of life. Therefore, ecocriticism is a necessary part of literary scholarship because literature cannot separate characters from nature that they domesticate either destructively or productively. Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.