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Literature & Environment
Lecture 2: Theory ecocriticism 1
=Overview about “Literary Theory”
-Notion
1. The body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of
literature
2. “ Theory” from the Greek “theoria” (contemplation, speculation, a
view or perspective of the Greek stage)
3. The underlying principles or the tools or different lenses, by which
we attempt to understand literature, art, and even culture
4. Not the meaning of a work of literature but the theories that reveal
what literature can mean
5. “Literary theory,” “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now “cultural
theory”
-Genealogy
1. Criticism has been around in one form or another since Ancient
Greece because we love to tell people what we think of stuff.
i. Platonic criticism: his views on art expressed in Phaedrus, Ion, and the
Republic.
ii. Aristotle’s Poetics
iii. Longinus’s “On the Sublime”
2. Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the
nineteenth century: German "higher criticism" subjected biblical texts to
a radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation.
3. Major Types of Literary Theory:
Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s)
Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism (1930s)
Marxist Criticism (1930s)
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s)
Structuralism / Semiotics (1920s)
Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction (1966)
New Historicism / Cultural Studies (1980s)
Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s)
Feminist Criticism (1960s)
Gender / Queer Studies (1970s)
Critical Race Theory (1970s)
-Functions
1. It provides a framework or perspective through which we are able
to analyze a literary work within the framework
2. It enables us deepen or widen our own understanding and heighten
our appreciation.
3. It works not on the level of a personal preference, but through an
objective process, leading to uniform judgment
4. Not value judgement: though a work is not related with
environmentalism, we do not claim that that work is morally wrong or
artistically has no value
=Notion of Ecocriticism
-Two ideas: eco + criticism
-eco: “not harming the environment” (OED)
-criticism: “the critical assessment of a literary or artistic work” (OED);
the scholarly study and interpretation of literature
-ecocriticism: the study of literature with a special attention to the
significance of nature in literature.
-Patrick D. Murphy: “literary criticism that arises from and is oriented
toward a concern with human and nonhuman interaction and
interrelationship.”
-Scott Slovic: “the study of nature writing by way of any scholarly
approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and
human-nature relationships in any literary text.”
=Ecopoetics
-Two key critics: Jonathan Bate and Jonathan Skinner
-They emphasize the root of “eco-” in the Greek word oikos, the home
or dwelling place and thus the term “ecopoetics” as a making, through
poetry, of the dwelling place or home.
-Johnathan Bate’s Song of the Earth (2000)
1. Bate’s question about poetry: “What are poets for?”: is poetry the
authentic representation of reality, or merely the decoration of life?
Does it help us to remember our origins?
2. These questions lead him to a new kind of poetics with an ecological
doom: ecopoetics, coined by him
3. The Song of the Earth uses the term, ecopoetics, to describe a rather
exclusive club of neo-romantic male poets
-Ecopoetics is something more than:
1. the making and study of pastoral poetry, or poetry of wilderness
2. poetry that explores humanity’s ethically challenged relation to other
animals.
3. poetry that confronts disasters and environmental injustices, including
the difficulties and opportunities of urban environments
-Jonathan Skinner as the editor of the influential journal Ecopoetics
(2001 - )
1. Rather than a kind of writing, ecopoetic is a form of site: to shift the
focus from themes to topoi
i. The English word 'topic' comes from the Greek word topos
ii. The Greek word topos: the place where a person or people live
2. To an array of practices converging on the oikos, the planet earth
that is the only home our species currently knows.
=Various terms
-Ecology: “the branch of biology concerned with the relations of
organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings” (OED)
-Environmentalism: protecting the earth from human pollution and
destruction.
-Ecocriticism (US, celebration of nature) & Green studies (UK, the
threats or dangers of nature)
-Ecological Footprint (cf. carbon footprint): the world’s premier
measure of humanity’s demand on nature
-Sustainable development: a pattern of resource use that aims to meet
human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can
be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future.
-Green Living / Going Green: To be environmentally sound or beneficial;
Preservation of resources and offering environmentally friendly
alternatives to traditional methods or products
=Genealogy of Ecocriticism
-Embryonic writings in relation to the emergence of ecocriticism in the
20th Century
1. ‘Enclosures: the ecological significance of a poem by John Clare’
(1963, Robert Waller, US)
2. ‘The ecological vision of Gary Snyder’ (1970, Thomas Lyon, US)
3. ‘Home at Grasmere: Ecological Holiness’ (1974, Karl Kroeber, UK)
-Establishment of ecocriticism
1. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition
(1991, Jonathan Bate, UK)
2. The Ecocriticism Reader (1996, Ed. By Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold
Fromm, US)
3. The Environmental Imagination (1996, Lawrence Buell, US)
-Eco-critics’s claim on Romanticism as the origin of ecocriticism:
William Wordsworth and John Clare
-From
1. The
2. The
3. The
the Ancient Civilizations
Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamia)
Old Testament (Judeo-Christianity)
metaphysical thinking of the Ancient Greek
=Main issues
-Notion of nature
1. Raymond Williams: nature may well be the most complex word in the
English language
2. Nature: “the phenomena of (1) the physical world collectively,
including (2) plants, animals, and the landscape, as (3) opposed to
humans or human creations” (OED)
3. Environment: “the surroundings or conditions in which a person,
animal, or plant lives or operates” (OED)
4. A natural environment and a social environment