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History (and/or Historicity) of and Ecocritical History: An Introductory Overview Prof. Jalal Uddin Khan Professor of Literature, Yorkville University, Toronto Campus, Canada Corresponding Author: Prof. Jalal Uddin Khan, E-mail: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Received: May 20, 2019 Overlapping and interconnected, interdisciplinary and heterogeneous, Accepted: June 27, 2019 amorphous and multi-layered, and deep and broad as it is, countless topics on Published: July 31, 2019 ecoliterature make ecocriticism a comprehensive catchall term that proposes Volume: 2 to look at a text--be it social, cultural, political, religious, or scientific--from Issue: 4 naturalist perspectives and moves us from “the community of literature to the DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2019.2.4.10 larger biospheric community which […] we belong to even as we are KEYWORDS destroying it” (William Rueckert).

Historicity; Ecocriticism; ecoliterature

As I was in the middle of writing and researching for this article, I was struck by a piece of called him “soft names” as a future Greenpeace and nature writing by an eleven year old sixth grader born Environmental Protection leader and theorist, a soon- to his (South Asian and American) mixed parents, both to-be close friend of Al Gore’s. The promising boy’s affiliated with Johns Hopkins and already proud to understanding, however short, of the Amazon ecology belong to the extended family of a Nobel Laureate in and ecosystem and the biological phenomena of its Physics. The young boy, Rizwan Thorne-Lyman, living organisms was really amazing. His essay wrote, as his science story project, an incredibly reminded me of other famous nature writings, beautiful essay, “A Day in the Life of the Amazon especially those by Fiona Macleod (see below), that Rainforest.” Reading about the rainforest was one of are the pleasure of those interested in the ecocriticism his interests, I was told. In describing the day-long of the literature of place--dooryards, backyards, activities of birds and animals among the tall trees and outdoors, open fields, parks and farms, fields and small plants, the 2 pp.-long narrative actually captures pastures, and different kinds of other wildernesses. the eternally continuing natural cycle of the Amazon. The budding naturalist’s neat classification of the wild Wikipedia entries and scholarly publications life into producers (leafy fruit and flowering plants and in hundreds of books and thousands of articles on trees), consumers (caimans/crocodiles, leafcutter ants, ecocritical and environmental studies of literature and capuchin monkey), predators (macaws, harpy eagles, culture demonstrate how vast and various these and jaguars, green anaconda), decomposers (worms, fungi the related topics are. Overlapping and interconnected, and bacteria), parasites (phorid flies) and scavengers interdisciplinary and heterogeneous, amorphous and (millipedes) was found to be unforgettably impressive. multi-layered, and deep and broad as they are, Also the organization of the essay into the Amazon’s countless topics on ecoliterature make ecocriticism a mutually benefitting and organically functioning flora comprehensive catchall term that proposes to look at a and fauna during the day--sunrise, midday, and sunset- text--be it social, cultural, political, religious, or -was unmistakably striking. I congratulated him as an scientific--from naturalist perspectives and moves us aspiring environmentalist specializing in rain forest. I from “the community of literature to the larger encouraged him that he should try to get his essay biospheric community which […] we belong to even published in a popular magazine like Reader’s Digest as we are destroying it” (William Rueckert). Having (published did he get in no time indeed!i) and that he evolved and progressed through a number of waves or should also read about (and visit) Borneo in Southeast phases from the start, ecocriticism covers all the Asia, home to other great biodiverse rainforests of the diffuse issues from “the ecologically adapted modes of world. I production” (Donald Worster) to assumptions about nature, biology, geography, environmental history,

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and environmental advocacies (Nancy Cook) to our Ecocriticism, perhaps the latest in modern environmental concerns and practices that “promote critical vocabulary, is the study of literature in relation the well-being of the earth” to how nature, wild or to nature, ecology and environment. It is an sparse, is perceived in literary texts and introduced examination of the possible connections made in a text into literary discussions about gender, sexuality, among the notions of place, people, self, society, and, politics, economics, ethnicity, and nationalism certainly, the physical natural system, including the (Stephanie Sarver). Sarver proceeds to say that geographical and geological aspects of the earth. “environmental issues are human issues, and that our Variously called literary ecology, ecotheory, reverence for nature—both textual and actual—is not ecoliterature, ecopoetry, ecopoetics, ecocomposition, […] a convenient excuse to avoid the problems of the eco-consciousness, green writing, and green studies, human world.”ii literature and the environment and their variations, ecocriticism is a demonstration of how the sense of Although ecocriticism is about the written biology, biopolitics, environmentalism, pastoralism, texts, not scientific disciplines, it is necessary to living spaces, and ergonomic designs informs the understand the term more clearly by having a works of literature. “Put as simply and loosely as preliminary idea about what are generally known as possible,” in the view of Ian Marshall, ecocriticism is ecology and ecosystem in modern biological sciences. “ informed by ecological awareness Briefly speaking, an ecosystem is a community of both [that] means either scientific or spiritual recognition of living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic--soil, mud, the interconnections of living things, including water, sunlight, air, cloud) things interacting with each humans, with each other and with their environment.” other and their larger physical environment. It consists According to Jonathan Culler (author of Literary of communities of interdependent organisms Theory: A Very Short Introduction), ecocriticism has inhabiting a common environment as their potential to bring change to society: “Most narrowly, housekeeping niche, biome, biosphere, or it is the study of literary representations of nature and hydrosphere. Ecology is a branch of biology that deals the environment and the changing values associated with the interrelationships between organisms (plants, with them, especially evocations of nature that might birds, animals, and insects) and their natural habitat. In inspire changes in attitude and behavior.”iv Pippa other words, ecology is the scientific study of Marland refers to ecocriticism as an umbrella term that biologically diverse ecosystems, complexly variable embraces “a range of critical approaches that explore and unstable through time, weather and seasons. the representation in literature (and other cultural Human ecology, it follows, is a study of human forms) of the relationship between the human and the organism in relationship with other biological non-human, largely from the perspective of anxieties organisms in their mutually inclusive habitat, be it around humanity’s destructive impact of the parasitical or symbiotic. Keeping with time and biosphere” (my emphases).v technology, there has been a growth of environmental studies that is: Ecocritical or environmental criticism may have originated from exactly the same anxieties: a multidisciplinary academic field which modern issues of life-affecting global warming, systematically studies human interaction desertification, deforestation, inappropriate with the environment [and] brings together agriculture, and the human-caused damage and the principles of the physical sciences, degradation to natural environment (or the looming commerce, economics and social sciences so threats of such crises) causing the green peace, climate as to solve contemporary environmental change, conservation, recycling drives, and animal problems. It is a broad field of study that rights movements going forward. It may also have includes the natural environment, the built been prompted the cyclical renewal, regeneration and environment, and the sets of relationships revitalization in nature from idyllic, rural and rustic to between them. The field encompasses study urban and residential landscapes to remote wilderness in basic principles of ecology and and seascapes. All this paves the way for Ursula environmental science, as well as associated Heise’s idea of a “world citizenship” based on subjects such as ethics, geography, everyone’s connection to earth as against global anthropology, policy, politics, urban capitalism and climate change. planning, law, economics, philosophy, sociology and social justice, planning, Recent decades have consequently seen the pollution control and natural resource “save the earth” movements, following the ecological management.iii imbalances, decreasing biodiversity, and the destructive effect, that is, pollution resulting from urbanization, industrialization, and technological 90

IJLLT 2(4):89-101 mechanization at the cost of nature. These are among is thus a response to scholarly specialization the most important issues facing the countries and that has gone out of control; eco-criticism communities today, far and near, developed and seeks to reattach scholars to each other and underdeveloped, or desert and fertile. Considering the scholarship to the real concerns of the world. global scale of the widely talked-about environmental Inherently, then, eco-criticism is crisis, the United Nations has been regularly interdisciplinary. In order to understand the organizing international conferences to address the connectedness of all things--including the life problem of climate change and help the nations meet of the mind and the life of the earth--one must the challenges thereof. Green movements promoting reconnect the disciplines that have become conservation of plants and animals and protesting sundered through over-specialization. environmentally destructive technology have for years Inherent in the idea of interdisciplinarity is proved to be politically effective pressure groups in the wholistic ideal. Therefore, eco-criticism today’s world politics. It is in this context of must remain "a big tent"--comprehensiveness earthliness that ecocriticism has emerged as a of perspectives must be encouraged and prominent mode of literary criticism and critical honored. All eco-critical efforts are pieces of theory. It is now an integral part of both literature a comprehensive continuum. Ecocritical studies and environmental humanities that, after approaches, thus, can be theoretical, Rueckert, deals with, historical, pedagogical, analytical, psychological, rhetorical, and on and on, […] the web of relationships between including combinations of the above. As a cultural products and nature and expressing response to felt needs and real crises, and as cultural and literary critiques from an an inherently wholistic practice, eco- environmentally political perspective. criticism also has an inherent ideological if Objects of study include texts, poems, plays, not moral component. A wholistic view of and, increasingly, visual productions like the universe is a value-centered one that films and artwork. While the ecocritical honors the interconnectedness of things. As approaches to these formats are diverse, a the interconnectedness of things is valued, so common and constant goal is to eliminate the too is the integrity of all things, be they dichotomy between nature and society. As creatures of the earth, critical practices, such, ecocritics deconstruct topics spiritual beliefs, or ethnic backgrounds. For encompassing, for example, the dearth of example, as eco-criticism invites all adequate responses to environmental crises, perspectives into its tent in order to the neglecting of environmental concerns, understand the human relationship to the and romanticized conceptions of nature. universe, the philosophies and Environmental justice and ethics also provide understandings of different ethnic groups will vi platforms for ecocriticism. be shared by all. Eco-criticism can be, for In exactly the same way, Thomas K. Dean individuals who choose to make it so, defines ecocriticism as “a study of culture and cultural socially activist or even spiritual. While some products (art works, writings, scientific theories, etc.) may criticize eco-criticism for being that is in some way connected with the human undisciplined because of such relationship to the natural world.” He explains in great comprehensiveness, it is that very wholistic details: view that marks it off from the particularized critical approaches of the past that have led to Eco-criticism is also a response to needs, the types of disconnections that eco-criticism problems, or crises, depending on one's seeks to heal. Although eco-criticism can perception of urgency. First, eco-criticism is touch virtually any discipline, when it a response to the need for humanistic translates into action, it generally comes back understanding of our relationships with the to its home ground--the human relationship natural world in an age of environmental with the earth. Eco-criticism, then, can be, destruction. In large part, environmental but need not be, politically active, as it crises are a result of humanity's advocates for an understanding of the world disconnection from the natural world, that works to heal the environmental wounds brought about not only by increasing humans have inflicted upon it (my technology but also by particularization; that emphases).vii is, a mentality of specialization that fails to recognize the interconnectedness of all In his essay, "The Land Ethic," published things. In terms of the academy, eco-criticism posthumously in A Sand County Almanac (1949), a

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classic text of the environmental movement, Aldo “Deep Ecology proposes new norms of Leopold distinguishes his ecologically based ethic human responsibility to change the human from the economics-based, utilitarian-based, exploitation of nature into co-participation with libertarian-based, and egalitarian-based land ethics. nature,” as said in the excellent article, “Introduction: He proposes that land ethic should include nonhuman An Overview of Ecocriticism,” one of the best of its members of the biotic community following the basic kind.xiii The same article brilliantly summarizes what principle that "A thing is right when it tends to is meant by deep ecology. It goes on to say: preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends Some of the main deep ecologists are: Arne otherwise.” His land ethic “expands the boundaries of Naess, Gary Synder, Bill Devall, George the community to include soils, waters, plants, and Sessions and Warwick Fox. The Poet animals, or collectively, the land. It changes the role Laureate of deep ecology is Gary Synder and of the humans from conqueror of the land-community his philosophical guru is a Norwegian to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess. In his fellow-members, and also respect for the 1973, Naess introduced the phrase „deep community as such."viii Followed by Rachel Carson ecology‟ to environmental literature in a and Lynn White in the early 1960s,ix Edward Paul famous article “The Shallow and the Deep, Abbey (1970s and ‘80s), Joseph Meeker (1972), Long- Range Ecology Movement: A Norman Maclean (author of A River Runs Through It, Summary”. Naess holds European and North 1976), Rueckert (1978), Raymond Williams (his essay American civilization responsible for the “Ideas of Nature” and his book The Country and the arrogance of its anthropocentric nature. He City, among his other great publications during 1970s contrasts his new deep or radical ecological and 1980s), John Elder (1985), and William Cronon world view with the dominant shallow (1980s), countless critics and writers have contributed paradigm. He finds the shallow worldview to establishing the term in the critical canon and the typical of mainstream environmentalism that related studies during the last three to four decades.x is an extension of European and North What Cronon, a noted environmental historian, says, American anthropocentrism. He assumes that in a concise and compact manner -- that “human acts their reason for conserving wilderness and occur within a network of relationships, processes, and preserving biodiversity are invariably tied to systems that are as ecological as they are cultural” — human welfare. Naess and George Sessions lies at the heart of literary ecology and could very well sets out eight key points of the deep ecology be applied to analyze all strands and shades of its platform, illustrated in “The Deep Ecological practice. Movement” as: Noted for his advocacy of environmental 1. The well-being and flourishing of human issues, criticism of public land policies, and opposition and nonhuman life on earth have value in to anthropocentrism, Abbey “wanted to preserve the themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, wilderness as a refuge for humans and believed that inherent value). These values are modernization was making us forget what was truly independent of the usefulness of the important in life.” He had differences with mainstream nonhuman world for human purposes. 2. environmentalist groups on what he thought were their Richness and diversity of life forms unacceptable compromises and his works played a contribute to the realization of these values significant role in the creation of the radical Earth and are also values in themselves. 3. Humans First!xi This is close to the radical idea of “deep have no right to reduce this richness and ecology” that “challenges the anthropocentrism […] diversity except to satisfy vital human needs. and the kind of ‘shallow ecological’ standpoints that 4. The flourishing of human life and cultures see the natural world as merely a resource for is compatible with a substantial decrease of humanity and that presuppose that human needs and the human population. The flourishing of human demands override other considerations. In nonhuman life requires such a decrease. 5. other words, deep ecologists believe that taking care Present human interference with the non- of our environmental problems first will in turn solve human world is excessive, and the situation is our society problems. The second strand that we must rapidly worsening. 6. Policies must therefore familiarize ourselves with is ‘social ecology’. A be changed. These policies affect basic reverse of deep ecology, social ecologists suggest we economic, technological and ideological must first address our social inequalities before structures. The resulting state of affairs will remedying the environment.”xii be deeply different from the present. 7. The ideological change is mainly that of 92

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appreciating life quality (dwelling in a work, its aesthetic quality, historical value, meaning, situations of inherent value) rather than point of view, language, and its treatment of race, adhering to an increasingly higher standard class, gender, history, politics, and other universally of living. There will be a profound awareness accepted themes such as love and religion. All such of the difference between big and great. 8. discussions are ultimately social, material, utilitarian Those who subscribe to the forgoing points and anthropocentric.. While these are all practical and have an obligation directly or indirectly to try politically correct, they are, unlike ecocriticism, to implement the necessary changes. These neither biocentric nor land-based nor driven by a principles can be summarized into three notion of the environmental ethic. . Partly in reaction simple points: 1. Wilderness preservation. 2. to the prevailing packages of literary criticism, Human population control. 3. Simple living. ecocritics’ position is to project the apparently non- Deep ecologists believe that nature possesses historical ecocriticism as something with its own the same moral standing and natural rights as boundary, sufficiently attentive to the “leaves of human beings. They propose a respect not grass” and “the rolling earth,” (with its “Air, soil, only for all life forms but also towards water, fire,” “Sunshine, storm, cold, heat,” “From the landscapes such as rivers and mountains. We open countenances of animals or from inanimate can say that the norms of deep ecology are: things,/ From the landscape or waters or from the (1) Fundamental interconnectedness of all exquisite apparition of the sky”), to refer to Whitman’s life forms and natural features. (2) Biocentric poems by those names, markedly different from the equality which affirms the equality of all canonically established critical discourses. One of the things in the biosphere. four ways of looking at ecocriticism by Stan Tag is Whitman’s way as proclaimed in A Song of the Rolling Abbey’s and Deep Ecologists’ radical views Earth: will find a mediation below as they do in Serenella Iovino’s suggestion of dissolution of “the traditional binaries [humans vs. animals, humans vs. nature] and thus extend closer towards eco-egalitarianism.”xiv I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, Since the Western Literature Association Meeting of 1989 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, when the The earth remains jagged and broken only to term ecocriticism was first adopted to refer to the him or her who remains jagged and broken. critical field of “the study of nature writing” (thanks to I swear there is no greatness or power that then a graduate student at Cornell, Cheryll Glotfelty, does not emulate those of the earth, who proposed and was then seconded by WLA’s then Past President Professor Glen Love in his speech, There can be no theory of any account unless entitled “Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological it corroborate the theory of the earth, Literary Criticism”), the field of ecocritical theory and practice took its roots only to grow and flourish since. No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what The 1994 WLA Meeting Salt Lake City, Utah--6 not, is of account, unless it compare with October 1994 with ecocriticism as a major item on the the amplitude of the earth, agenda just confirmed that and helped the latter take a long step forward to develop into a widely accepted Unless it face the exactness, vitality, critical theory today. It is now a solidly established impartiality, rectitude of the earth. (my critical theory or tool in its own merit, institutionalized emphases) through a number of professional bodies and journals such as Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Tag’s first way—the way of Whitman--is also is his Culture and Environment; The Journal of second.xv Recounting the story of a student watching Ecocriticism; Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism; a hillside change from winter to spring, from “a clump Indian Journal of Ecocriticism; and, perhaps more of kinked, dead-looking sticks” into “a full bouquet of importantly, The Association for the Study of wiry branches weighted with mini-pineapples,” that is, Literature and Environment (ASLE) and its ISLE: to a bushy place full of lilac plants and flowers, buds Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and and leaves, Tag explains that students need to, Environment that became a quarterly journal in 2009, […] explore the natural world firsthand. To published in conjunction with Oxford University read the earth--carefully, closely, and often; Press. to pay attention to its rhythms, patterns, Literary studies are traditionally dominated intricacy. Students need to get to know the by discussions of literary movements, literary style of earth, not just discuss it. Such outdoor

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experiences will enliven their reading of Glen Love’s essay, “Revaluating Nature: Toward an books, and even sharpen their thinking and Ecological Criticism,” aims to deconstruct human- writing. It means creating assignments that centered scholarship and advocates a revaluation of get students out of the classroom, or that nature in literature, away from an “ego-consciousness” challenge students to study any given subject to an “eco-consciousness.”xviii Cokinos points out that within the larger contexts of their campus ecocriticism prefers not to privilege language-centered environments, their towns, watersheds, and is fundamentally ethical (like continents, planet. We must give students feminism is at its best) and brings to the fore both time and space to experience the natural human and nonhuman nature that are there in the world.” world of a text.xix Emphasizing the importance of field trips to open Looking for a balance or compromise among places by students and scholars alike, as Tag does, the different forms of ecocriticism, David Taylor Scheese also underlines the need “to trace the defines ecocriticism as “a broad term that groups very historical evolution of a place, to get the feel of a disparate types of criticism.” One type is polemical in particular environment.” He goes on to say: “Like an so much as it distances itself from the text as no more anthropologist we should engage in fieldwork; our than a linguistic structure, self-sufficient and self- informant is the land itself. Outdoor education goes contained, or as a work of merely aesthetic beauty, or hand-in-hand with ecocriticism because we and our as merely depicting human society and human values. students need to be reminded regularly that the earth Its main interest lies in the physical terrain of the land was not made for humans alone. There's no such thing itself and then in the cultural constructions of as ‘bad weather.’” As stated by Glotfelty, environment and human descriptions of an actual “ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to landscape. Yet another type such as is literary studies, rather than an anthropomorphic or opposite and also polemical in being solely textual and human-centered approach.”xvi In common with other language-centered, based on the close reading of a critics such as Worster, Christopher Cokinos, and Kent literary work. In New Criticism’s style of Ryden that ecocriticsm actually takes an ethical interpretation, according to Terry Eagleton (in light of stance, away from mere aestheticism and his Literary Theory: An Introduction), meaning is anthropocentrism, Glotfelty gathers that ecocritics thought to be “public and objective, inscribed in the should begin by asking questions such as “What cross- very language of the literary text, not a question of fertilization is possible between literary studies and some putative ghostly impulse in a long-dead author's environmental discourse in related disciplines such as head, or the arbitrary private significances a reader history, philosophy, psychology, art history, and might attach to his words. [It] ignores the milieu in ethics?” She goes on asserting that: which the text is read, the historical concerns of and influences on the author, and, of course, the cultural Despite the broad scope of inquiry and background of the reader.” While ecocriticism does disparate levels of sophistication, all not disapprove of cultural critique and historical ecological criticism shares the fundamental backgrounds, New Criticism by its very definition premise that human culture is connected to does. Both ecocriticism and New Criticism are, the physical world, affecting it and affected however, disinterested in New Historicism, by it. Ecocriticism takes as its subject the anthropocentrism, and aesthetic viewpoints. interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts, language Neil Evernden’s The Social Creation of and literature […] we must conclude that Nature (1992), as the title suggests, presents literature does not float above the material ecocriticism not as a separate or isolated species of world in some aesthetic ether, but, rather, criticism as the rigid and exclusively earth-bound plays a part in an immensely complex global critics plans to do, but as interdisciplinary in scope and system, in which energy, matter, and ideas approach.. According to Evernden, “Nature is as much interact. Most ecocritical work shares a a social entity as a physical one. In addition to the common motivation: the troubling awareness physical resources to be harnessed and transformed, it that we have reached the age of consists of a domain of norms that may be called upon environmental limits, a time when the in defense of certain social ideals. In exploring the consequences of human actions are damaging consequences of conventional understandings of the planet's basic life support systems. This nature, [the book] also seeks a way around the awareness sparks a sincere desire to limitations of a socially created nature in order to contribute to environmental restoration (my defend what is actually imperiled […]."xx In a similar emphases).xvii vein, Don Scheese considers ecostudies “inherently 94

IJLLT 2(4):89-101 political” the way, as she mentions, Judith Fetterley imperiled places lies in this imaginative involvement, considers feminism to be political. Not strictly as readers and as agents of change, insofar as it fosters separating ecocriticism from other critical stances in us a sense of sympathy and belonging” (my such as the aesthetic view and, having much in emphases).xxii common with other critics, Scheese attempts to integrate between (1) nature writing and the In accord with the majority of mainstream historicizing literary/critical theories, (2) real nature ecocritics, Mark Schlenz also seeks to bring and “the post-modernist claim that nature is a social ecocriticism into “dynamic interconnection with and psychological construct,” and (3) ecocriticism and worlds we all live in-- inescapably social and material the aesthetic and anthropomorphic considerations. worlds in which issues of race, class, and gender Like many others, Scheese also is asking the ecocritics inevitably intersect in complex and multi-faceted ways to be tolerant of their critics. He believes one could with issues of natural resource exploitation and benefit from and be informed by interpretations from conservation.” So does Scott Slovic, who while taking diverse points of view and so rejects or excludes into cognizance the place of human consciousness in a nothing from the equation because he thinks “all threatened natural world, argues that “Literary writing is anthropocentric in that it must be filtered scholarship and literature itself are, on the most through a human consciousness.” In common with fundamental level, associated with human values and others, he shares with us that: attitudes” from which critics cannot just shy away. Like the above, Tag’s third way of looking at One of the startling discoveries I have made ecocriticism is its interdisciplinary aspect as fleshed in teaching nature writing over the years is of out in the following: the broad community of scholars across the disciplines who regularly incorporate the When we study the relationships between literature of place in their courses. language and landscape, text and terrain, or Ecocriticism is most appropriately applied to words and woods, we are not studying two a work in which the landscape itself is a separate things (as if we lived in some dominant character, when a significant dualistic universe), but interdependencies interaction occurs between author and place, […] each interconnected to the other, and character(s) and place. Landscape by both wholly dependent upon such basic definition includes the non-human elements natural elements for their survival as sunlight, of place--the rocks, soil, trees, plants, rivers, water, and air. No literary theory would be animals, air--as well as human perceptions worth a whit if the sun burnt out tomorrow and modifications. How an author sees and […] Ecocritical scholarship also needs to be describes these elements relates to interdisciplinary. Just as a healthy ecosystem geological, botanical, zoological, depends upon a diversity of plant and animal meteorological, ecological, as well as life, healthy ecocriticism depends upon a aesthetic, social, and psychological, diversity of viewpoints and perspectives. A considerations (my emphases).xxi fully ecological analysis of any text can only happen within a community of readings (my Using the term ecoliterature again and again emphases). alongside ecocriticism, Allison B. Wallace observes that “Writing that examines and invites intimate Quoting Don Elgin from The Comedy of the Fantastic human experience of place's myriad ingredients: (1985) in support of his view, Tag continues: weather, climate, flora, fauna, soil, air, water, rocks, It means investigating the manner in which minerals, fire and ice, as well as all the marks there of politics, economics, science, religion, human history.” According to her, ecocriticism must language, medicine, and countless other work to make writing about place prominent in all matters go into the making of a piece of disciplines, not just English. All fields of academic literature. It means trying to see the whole, study, Wallace argues, “concentrate on human life, on and the whole is so enormous and complex the one hand, or nonhuman life, on the other, [and] that the temptation is to retreat to the comfort rarely do they make any significant marriage between of specialized knowledge, information that is the two their aim. Ecocriticism stands poised to reassuring precisely because it has simplified integrate the field that does--ecoliterature--into the world to the point at which it can be virtually all the standard disciplines. Why should this understood. matter? Because this kind of reading points to human participation in nature that enriches and enlarges the Tag’s third way as above is interwoven with mind and spirit; because our best hope for our his fourth, which is Thoreau’s —“The universe is

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larger than our views of it.” Looking to mediate Canyons, and James Fenimore Cooper’s American between ecocriticism and other kinds of criticisms, frontier. All these are conceived with a profound David W. Teague finds convergence saying, “We’d do ecocritical consciousness out of the natural world and well to impart to ecocriticism some of the energy and its literary representation. All such landscapes are “as sophistication that other critical movements-- crucial to and as formative of” the characters in the Marxism, feminism, civil rights movement--have in literary works concerned as “the cityscapes of Don the past few decades brought to bear on literature.” Passos, James, or Baldwin.” Citing the example of the March 1994 volume of American Quarterly that is devoted to the discussion The Garden of Eden is an original and of American suburbs and that addresses, using archetypal lovely spot (locus amoenus) of which kind sociological methodology, “the questions of land-use, there are many (loci amoeni) in literature to provide a gender, race, class, and, significantly, reading,” way for peace, pleasure or solace for pain—physical Teague asks, “Can we apply similar paradigms in our or spiritual. For example, there is the forest and the endeavor to make the study of literature and river by which the fallen Hester Prynne walks at night environment more relevant to our students' along with her daughter, the forest walk playing a experiences?”xxiii significant role in her life of reflection and determination in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The Since there is hardly any creative writing that sufferings of the love triangle--Dorigen, Arveragus is conceivable without some kind of setting in the and Aurelius—in Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale are enlivening and actually life-sustaining external nature balanced by a description of the obstructing black that shields and shelters the human element in its rocks on the coast of Brittany, reminding the readers bosom, almost all literary works, in all genres, of the storms, moors, and seashores in Twelfth Night, including folk-and-fairy tales, deeply and The Tempest, and King Lear. There is the Forest of meaningfully lend themselves to diverse ecocritical Arden in As You Like It, Athenian woods in A interpretations. They do not yield to the same extent to Midsummer Night’s Dream, “mighty oaks” in The other critical modes. No other theories—Marxist, Merry Wives of Windsor, Birnam Wood of oaks in Structuralist, Deconstructionist, New Historicist, New Macbeth, ancient Druid oak groves, the wood with a Critical, Feminist—would apply as aptly and suitably large oak in Coleridge’s Christabel, and Frost’s as ecocriticism does to a large body of literary texts. woods, “lovely, dark and deep” on a snowy evening, As just stated, since the majority of literature, as an yet deflecting him forward toward keeping his artistic and/or realistic representation of life (be it a promises miles away. In his Notes on the State of novel, a play, a poem, or even a war poem or an epic Virginia (1785), Thomas Jefferson would describe the narrative of adventure) invariably and indispensably natural environment as “The Natural bridge, the most lies in the lap of nature, nothing seems to fall outside sublime of Nature’s works.” the scope of biological and environmental discourse about both the human and nonhuman presences in a Sometimes a woody place would provide for text. a strategic location for a military general to launch an attack from as the Iraqi/Kurdish Saladin did during the As such, ecocritics exploring the relationship Third Crusade (1189-1192) when he started a full- between the two worlds, human and natural, find that scale assault against Richard I’s (Richard the Adam and Eve walking through the Garden of Eden Lionheart’s) forces from a wooded spot in the Battle and committing their act of disobedience by eating the of Arsuf. Likewise, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, forbidden fruit that led to their fall from God’s grace Macbeth is told by the supernatural agents that he will and then covering their shame by fig leaves available only be defeated when the Great Birnam Wood comes are environmentally situated in their natural to his Dunsinane hill. Later, his enemy Macduff's surroundings, regardless of how divinely Edenic their soldiers come through the Birnam Wood and each situation was. Critics also find Odysseus’s homeward soldier cuts a large branch to shield himself, so that voyage,xxiv (for that matter, Coleridge’s Ancient when the enemy forces move, it looks as if the Birnam Mariner’s and Melville’s Captain Ahab’s voyages wood moves only to have Macbeth defeated and across the oceans), Oedipus’s dry and barren killed. As stated by Ralph W. Black, any book having (“cursed”) land in ancient Thebes, and Lear’s trees in it bears suggestions of woods and forests and (“commodified”) up-for-grab land in ancient Britain other forms of wilderness carries profound ecological and the stormy heath he is exposed to in the process of implications, and, therefore, should be on the his realizing the hard reality of truthxxv are all within environmental literature reading list. “If ecocriticism's the framework of ecological heritage. So are Hardy’s territory,” he says, “is the interplay of the human and Egdon Heath,xxvi Willa Cather’s Prairies, J C Van the nonhuman in literary texts,” almost all texts fall Dyke’s Colorado Deserts, Abbey’s Glen and Grand under the category of environmental literature.xxvii 96

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In May 2012, when I was teaching in Oman, Response, the meaning of a text in the context of its I attended a conference in Canada to present a paper first appearance in a volume that may sometimes be on Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. During the conference I different from its later meaning in isolation or discovered that it was a paperless conference even anthologized contexture, and the theory of misreading, without the brochure printed on paper. The reason was originality, and anxiety of influence. However, that the conference organizers would like, as a matter although I was not up-to-date in my knowledge of of commitment to their ecological ideal or principle, to ecocriticism, I briefly made use of it in my discussions save a tree by being as paperless as possible. The of William Jones’s ancient Arabian poetry, participants would have to check the schedule either Wordsworth’s “Arab Dream,” Shelley’s Ozymandias online or at best from a few “paper” notices pasted on (all three in the context of the Arabian desert), and the wall at the venue. An American participant was Byron’s Manfred.xxviii Since then I have developed a direct in pointing out that “Environment is their god,” special liking for the ecological criticism and have meaning the Canadians, whose Environment and been watching how it was becoming a fast expanding Climate Change Canada is a huge Government field of academic study. Literary ecology has become Department “responsible for coordinating astonishingly wide and broad to embrace all environmental policies and programs.” Much larger examinations and investigations of literature and than its American counterpart EPA (Environmental culture from the perspective of the coexistence and Protection Agency), Environment Canada makes its coordination of diverse species--living and nonliving, imposing ubiquitous appearance all across the country. birds and animals, fish and fowl, plants and trees, fruits and flowers, oceans and mountains, and rivers and Both the conference and the Environment deserts. Rueckert who was the first to coin the term Canada, along with Julia Roberts’ Mother Nature “ecocriticism” argues for precisely the same -- a way Conservation campaign, Harrison Ford’s campaign “to find the grounds upon which the two that “Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; communities—the human, the natural—can coexist, nature would survive the extinction of the human cooperate, and flourish in the biosphere.”xxix being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature,” and the In 1950s, Northrop Frye used the seasons in Belgium-based (originally of Madagascar) singer Lala his archetypal patterns of criticism in which “each Njava's “We need nature, but nature doesn't need us,” season is aligned with a literary genre: comedy with were an eye-opener for me as far as the modern vast spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, ecological study of literature is concerned. They were and satire with winter.”xxx In a way strikingly similar, simply voicing the contemporary concerns about the Meeker, a pioneering ecocritic to first use the term increasing deforestation and desertification, “literary ecology,” present comedy and tragedy as environmental deterioration, greenhouse gas ecological concepts reflecting “forces greater than that emissions, nuclear race and the possibilities of further of humans.”xxxi The two forms that have to do with nuclear destruction (after WWII), residential survival, renewal, regeneration, death and destruction degradation in the neighborhood, loss of an ecosystem are analyzed as reflecting “forces greater than that of caused by oil spill along the coastlines and the humans” and connecting “literary and environmental ecological imbalance created thereby, gradual studies as a cohesive field of study.” decrease of biodiversity, and the alarming extinction or great dying of species. They were lending their If this is all valid, which it indeed is, one can support to the ongoing green peace movement, easily argue that an enthusiasm for an ecocentric green arguments for nuclear power as an environmental way of living and learning is innate, primitive and solution as against nuclear power as an environmental primordial. Associated with human life and existence problem, demands for stricter pollution control laws from the beginning, a green impulse made its way into and the prevention of noise/sound pollution, search for the creative imagination of the writers developing in alternative sources of energy in ethanol, wind turbines, them an environmental consciousness and a sense of and solar and hydro power, bioethics, biotechnology, environmental protection and conservation throughout ergonomics, importance of clean water and pure and history. In other words, there has been a cultivation of pristine natural surroundings everywhere. literary and pastoral ecology in their creative expression since the time of Hesiod’s Works & Days, Although I was coming across the ecology- Aesop’s Fables, Theocritus’s Idylls, Roman related beautiful terms (mentioned above)—all very Statesman Cato the Elder’s (234 BC to 149 BC) dear to me, I did not have a chance to deal with them practical guide to farm management and husbandry De as much as I would like. To my study of literature I Agricultura (On Agriculture), and Virgil’s Georgics applied in varying degrees other theories and –isms (that exalts the life and work of the farmer). Ibn such as New Historicism, New Criticism, Reader- Basslan, who was the head of the royal botanical

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gardens in Toledo and Seville, collected plants while with intimacy,’ I said. ‘Men define intimacy returning to Spain from the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage in through their bodies. It is physical. They Mecca and wrote his Diwan al-Filaha (Book on define intimacy with the land in the same Agriculture) in the late 11th century. The English way.’ geographer Richard Hakluyt wrote on the value of plant introductions in the 1580s. ‘Many men have forgotten what they are connected to,’ my friend added. ‘Subjugation In this respect, Robert Sallares’ The Ecology of women and nature may be a loss of of the Ancient Greek World (1991) is “a pioneering intimacy within themselves.’ xxxiii study in historical population biology [offering] the first comprehensive ecological history of the ancient The ultra- or radical feminists do not seem to be Greek world [and proposing] a new model for treating comfortable with the idea of ecocriticism treating the relationship between the population and the land, nature as all-patient, motherly, fertile, feminine, centering on the distribution and abundance of living resourceful, giving birth, going through cycles, organisms.”xxxii It was in the same year that Max varying moods, swells and subsides, and bends and Oelschlaeger published his The Idea of Wilderness: straights. They might like to see nature,--though they From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (1991) that are as wily, strong, powerful, forceful, occasionally examines the development of the concept of “wild capricious, and always independent-minded as nature nature” from the ancient times through Wordsworth is--as a barren, yet seductive, voluptuous and reckless and Coleridge. femme fatale only with a powerful sway of its own! All ecofeminists would, however, probably love to see In the majority of literary works, ancient or what happens in the Irish dramatist J M Synge’s one- modern, there is a carefully chosen predominance of act play, The Shadow of the Glen. There is a homeless nature and the natural world as shown by a lively tramp, who hopes to rest for a night and mend his description of landscape either as a beatific clothes at the home of Nora and her old farmer background or a forensic foreground against the husband Dan Burke. The tramp tempts the young Nora human drama taking place therein. Humans need away with an invitation to a life of simple pastoral nature and its tactile bosom to sustain their life and attractions, saying (in lines 397-405, at the end of the living just as they need the mother to be born. This play): leads us to ecofeminism, which, as a branch of ecocriticism, as pointed out by Marshall, is now Come along with me now, lady of the house, “bigger than the rest of the tree.” It “has critiqued,” and it's not my blather [babble, ramble, Culler says, “masculaninist propensities to dominate talking without sense] you'll be hearing only, nature rather than coexist with it.” Seeking to but you'll be hearing the herons [long-legged dismantle the androcentric viewpoint of the freshwater and coastal birds] crying out over environment and the male stranglehold on it, the black lakes, and you'll be hearing the ecofeminists examine the patriarchal, hierarchical and grouse [a kind of bird] and the owls with gendered relationship between men and land. They them, and the larks [high-flying singing argue that the land is controlled and dominated by men birds] and the big thrushes [also small singing the way they control and dominate women. Men use birds] when the days are warm, and it's not and occupy the land as their property the way they do from the like of them you'll be hearing a talk with regards to women, who are close to nature both of getting old like Peggy Cavanagh [an old biologically and emotionally. Nature can be woman, emblem of Nora’s future fate] and represented as empowered or oppressed as women; losing the hair off you, and the light of your parallels can be drawn between the treatment of the eyes, but it's fine songs you'll be hearing land in all its forms (residential, industrial, when the sun goes up, and there'll be no old recreational, lakes, hills, mountains, valleys, water, fellow wheezing [Nora’s old husband birds and animals) and the sufferings of women, suffering from asthmatic coughing], the like minorities, and immigrants. In “Refuge: An Unnatural of a sick sheep, close to your ear (my History,” Terry Tempest Williams records a emphases and my insertions in parentheses). conversation she had with her friend about men Finding freedom from bondage at her dull white- behaving domineeringly both towards women and haired husband’s isolated cottage at the head of a glen, environment as they were driving together: Nora goes away to live with the tramp in close contact We spoke of rage. Of women and landscape. with nature. Nora saves her life from boredom by How our bodies and the body of the earth being in the midst of open nature. It is both a comic have been mined. ‘It has everything to do and ironic environmental commentary that may be 98

IJLLT 2(4):89-101 compared with what the tragic King Lear, along with natural be consistently made. A large part of literature his comic but wise Fool, learns and experiences in the has of course been devoted to doing precisely that kind stormy heath under the open sky. of depiction for ages and centuries. The biocentric vision of poets and writers, as rightly pointed out by Let me conclude with the words of Ryden, ecocritics, one after another (Jonathan Bate, Karl who further elaborates his understanding of the main Kroeber, Lawrence Buell, David McCraken, Onno subject as follows: Oerlemans, Scot Russel Sanders, Edward Sapir, Greg Ecocriticism, and the texts upon which Gerrard, Gary Snyder, Kate Soper, Wilhelm Trampe, ecocritical scholars focus, provide perhaps Dominic Head, William Howarth, Richard Kerridge, the most clear and compelling means we have Joanna Cullen Brown, James McKusick, Keith of literally grounding the study of literature Thomas, and Timothy Morton, among others) has in the vital stuff of life--the earth that made them focus on the interplay of the human and the surrounds and sustains us. The ecocritical nonhuman, seeing themselves “as fellow citizens with stance reconnects literary study to both the non-humans in the sylvan surroundings.” As a solution processes and the problems inherent in living to the problems of technological mechanization, on this heavily burdened planet, focusing our industrialization, and urbanization at the cost of attention anew on the ground beneath our nature, environmentally conscious literary texts feet, on our complex relationship to that suggest that since there cannot be a quick fix, ground, and on the implications of our politically or policy-wise, there should at least be a behavior toward that ground; it removes change in the human consciousness in terms of literary scholarship from the realm of rarified locating the place of humans in nature that would word games, from the endlessly self- challenge the marginalization of ecological concerns reflecting hall of mirrors that comprises so and foreground the impact of ecosystems on life and much of contemporary criticism and makes it language. xxxiv matter in human affairs (my emphases). For Further Readings and References: Citing Wendell Berry and William Stafford, Ryden argues that the context of literature is not the “literary 1. Adamson, Joni and Scott Slovic. “The Shoulders world” as such but that its “real habitat is the We Stand On: An Introduction to Ethnicity and household and the community--that it can and does Ecocriticism.” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures affect, even in practical ways, the life of a place—” of the US 34, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 5–24. and that “all events and experiences are local.” 2. Bellarsi, Franca. “The Challenges of Nature and Insisting on the place and its locality, Ryden claims Ecology.” Comparative American Studies: An that ecocriticism “demands that we listen to the stories International Journal 7, 2009 - Issue 2. Published that people tell about the land, that we examine how online: 18 Jul 2013 they shape and have shaped the land […], it demands 3. Bernaerts, Lars, Marco Caracciolo, Luc Herman, that we be folklorists, geographers, historians, and Bart Vervaeck. “The Storied Lives of Non- landscape readers, students of material culture […]. human Narrators.” Narrative 22, no. 1 (January Writings about nature and the landscape, and the 2014): 68–93. doi: 10.1353/nar.2014.0002 interdisciplinary study of those writings, explore in its 4. Bracke, Astrid, and Marguérite Corporaal. most basic form the intersection of art with the “Ecocriticism and English Studies: An rhythms and textures of life on earth and, throughout Introduction.” English Studies 91, no. 7 that exploration, achieve a deeper resonance, raising (2010): 709–12. fundamental ethical questions, demanding that we doi: 10.1080/0013838X.2010.518038 think carefully about how to live well and wisely. 5. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Criticism has no more important work than this (my Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of emphases). American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Due to global ecological crisis, there may 6. Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental indeed be a state of “interregnum” (a term that Fiona Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Macleod uses to suggest not a break, “no Imagination. London: Blackwell, 2005. interregnum,” but a continuity in the life of nature even 7. Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered in deep winter around the Scottish shores) on the way. World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the Nature has increasingly become “a silenced other,” US and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Harvard necessitating that it be foregrounded in the human University Press, 2001. representations of it and that a portrayal of the 8. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth, and George harmonious relationship between the human and the B. Handley. Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of

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the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Studies, 99:4, 355-365, DOI: Press, 2011. 10.1080/0013838X.2018.146525 9. Easterlin, Nancy. A Biocultural Approach to 24. Keen, Suzanne. “Fast Tracks to Narrative Literary Theory and Empathy: Anthropomorphism and Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Dehumanization in Graphic University Press, 2012. Narratives.” SubStance 40, no. 1 (2011): 135–55. 10. Eggan, Taylor A. “Landscape Metaphysics: doi: 10.1353/sub.2011.0003 Narrative Architecture and the Focalisation of the 25. Knickerbocker, Scott. Ecopoetics: The Language Environment,” English Studies, Volume 99, 2018 - of Nature, the Nature of Issue 4: Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory (Taylor Language. Amherst: University of Massachusetts & Francis). Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1475594 26. Lehtimäki, Markku. “Natural Environments in 11. Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. London: Routledge, 200 Narrative Contexts: Cross-Pollinating Ecocriticism 1. and Narrative Theory.” Storyworlds: A Journal of 12. Gifford, Terry. Reconnecting with John Muir: Narrative Studies 5 (2013): 119–41. Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice. Athens: doi: 10.5250/storyworlds.5.2013.0119 University of Georgia Press, 2006. 27. Le Guin, Ursula. “The Carrier Bag Theory of 13. Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literary Studies Fiction.” In The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” In The in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary and Harold Fromm. Athens: University of Georgia Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Press, 1996. Fromm. Athens: University of Georgia 28. Garry MacKenzie. “Nature, environment and Press, 1996. poetry: ecocriticism and the poetics of Seamus 14. Gomel, Elana. Narrative Space and Time: Heaney and Ted Hughes.” Review by Susanna Representing Impossible Topologies in Lidström. Green Letters 21, 2017-Issue 1. Literature. London: Routledge, 2014. Published online: 27 Jan 2017. 15. Heise, Ursula. Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: The 29. Meeker, Joseph W. “The Comic Mode.” In The Environmental Imagination of the Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold 16. Heise, Ursula. “Afterword: Postcolonial Fromm, 155–169. Athens: University of Georgia Ecocriticism and the Question of Literature.” Press, 1996. In Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and 30. Nixon, Rob. “Slow Violence, Neoliberalism, and World Narratives, edited the Environmental Picaresque.” In Slow Violence by Bonnie Roos and Alex Hunt. Charlottesville: U and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 45– niversity of Virginia Press, 2010. 67. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 17. Herman, David. “Narratology Beyond the Press, 2011. Human.” Diegesis 32, no. 1 (2014): 131–43. 31. Nolan, Sarah. “Un-natural Poetics: 18. Herman, David. Narratology Beyond the Human: Natural/Cultural Intersections in Poetic Language Storytelling and Animal Life. Oxford University and Form.” In New International Voices in Press, 2018. Ecocriticism, edited by Serpil Oppermann. 19. Herman, David. “Spatial Reference in Narrative Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. Domains.” Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the 32. Otto, Eric C. Green Speculations: Science Fiction Study of Discourse 21, no. 4 (2001): 515–41. and Transformative Environmentalism. Columbus: doi: 10.1515/text.2001.010 Ohio State University Press, 2012. 20. Herman, David. “Storyworld/Umwelt: Nonhuman 33. Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Experiences in Graphic Narratives.” SubStance 40, Vulnerability in Literature and Film. Columbia no. 1 (2011): 156–81. doi: 10.1353/sub.2011.0000 University Press, 2011. 21. Iovino, Serenella & Serpil Oppermann. Material 34. Pick, Anat and Guinevere Narraway. Screening Ecocriticism. Indiana University Press, 2014. Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human. New York: 22. James, Erin. The Storyworld Accord: Berghahan Books, 2013. Econarratology and Postcolonial 35. Rodriguez, David. “Narratorhood in the Narratives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Anthropocene: Strange Stranger as Narrator-Figure Press, 2015. in The Road and Here.” English Studies, 99, 2018 23. James, Erin & Eric Morel (2018), “Ecocriticism - Issue 4: Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory and Narrative Theory: An Introduction,” English (Taylor and Francis), https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1481187 100

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(Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The 41. Slovic, Scott. Going Away to Think: Engagement, Road and Richard McGuire’s graphic Retreat, and Ecocritical novel Here). Responsibility. Reno: University of Nevada 36. Roos, Bonnie & Alex Hunt, Postcolonial Green: Press, 2008. Environmental Politics and World Narrative. 42. Warhol, Robin. “Neonarrative: or, How to Render University of Virginia Press, 2010. the Unnarratable in Realist Fiction and 37. Ryan, Marie-Laure, Kenneth Foote, Contemporary Film.” In A Companion to and Maoz Azaryahu. Narrating Space/Spatializing Narrative Theory, edited Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and by James Phelan and Peter Geography Meet. Columbus: Ohio State J.Rabinowitz. London: Blackwell, 2005. University Press, 2016. 43. Weik von Mossner, Alexa. Affective Ecologies: 38. Satterfield, Terre, and Scott Slovic. What’s Nature Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Worth: Narrative Expressions of Environmental Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Values. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017. Press, 2004. 44. Wildcat, Daniel R. Red Alert!: Saving the Planet 39. Iovino, Serenella. “Restoring the Imagination of with Indigenous Knowledge. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Place: Narrative Reinhabitation and the Po Publishing, 2009. Valley.” In The Bioregional Imagination: 45. Welling, Bart H. “Petronarratology: A Bioregional Literature, Ecology, and Place, edited Approach to Oil Stories.” English Studies Volume by Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, 99, 2018 - Issue 4 and Karla Armbruster. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. ABOUT THE AUTHOR 40. Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann. “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter.” Prof. Jalal Uddin Khan is an author of numerous In Material Ecocriticism, edited by Serenella books and articles, the writer, educated in the USA, Iovino and Serpil Oppermann. Bloomington, IN: taught English in Malaysia, Qatar, and Oman before Indiana University Press, 2014. recently starting teaching General English at Yorkville University, Canada.

i https://stonesoup.com/post/a-day-in-the-life-in-the- x Elder, Imagining the Earth (1985). Cronon wrote amazon-rainforest/ many books of which mention may be made of ii http://www.asle.org/wp- Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf Ecology of New England (1983; 20th anniversary iii edition, Hill & Wang, 2003); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_studies Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West iv https://medium.com/@Nick_DeMott/a-brief- (Norton, 1991); and Uncommon Ground: Rethinking history-of-ecocriticism-a120614d30fc the Human Place in Nature (Norton. 1995). v https://medium.com/@Nick_DeMott/a-brief- xi Abbey wrote many works of fiction and nonfiction history-of-ecocriticism-a120614d30fc of which Desert Solitaire: A Season in the vi Wilderness (1968) and The Monkey Wrench Gang http://www.environmentandsociety.org/tools/keywor (1975) are more well-known than others. Earth First! ds/william-rueckerts-literature-and-ecology- is a radical environmental advocacy group that experiment-ecocriticism emerged in the United States in 1979. To stop the vii http://www.asle.org/wp- compromising measures, its strategy involves eco- content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf sabotage and ecoterrorism. viii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_ethic xii https://medium.com/@Nick_DeMott/a-brief- ix Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1962, history-of-ecocriticism-a120614d30fc Carson’s Silent Spring documents, according to xiii Wikipedia, “the adverse environmental effects caused https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/ by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson 153116/5/05.%20introduction.pdf accused the chemical industry of spreading xiv disinformation, and public officials of accepting the https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/ industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.” 153116/5/05.%20introduction.pdf White's landmark essay, "The Historical Roots of Our xv http://www.asle.org/wp- Ecological Crisis" (1962). content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf

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summer is the culmination of life in the seasonal xvi Glotfelty and Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism calendar, and the romance genre culminates with Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, 1996 some sort of triumph, usually a marriage. Autumn is xvii http://www.asle.org/wp-content/uploads/ASLE_P the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which rimer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf parallels the tragedy genre because it is, above all, xviii See The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in known for the "fall" or demise of the protagonist. Literary Ecology, 225–240. Also Love’s Practical Satire is metonymized with winter on the grounds Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the that satire is a "dark" genre; satire is a disillusioned Environment (Charlottesville: University of Virginia and mocking form of the three other genres. It is Press, 2003). noted for its darkness, dissolution, the return of xix http://www.asle.org/wp- chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure. Summer – content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf Romance. The birth of the hero. Autumn – Tragedy. xx His two other important books are: The Natural Movement towards the death or defeat of the hero. Alien: Humankind and Environment and Winter – Irony/Satire. The hero is absent. Spring – The Paradox of environmentalism : symposium Comedy. The rebirth of the hero. The context of a proceedings. genre determines how a symbol or image is to be xxi http://www.asle.org/wp- interpreted. Frye outlines five different spheres in his content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf schema: human, animal, vegetation, mineral, and xxii http://www.asle.org/wp- water. The comedic human world is representative of content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf wish-fulfillment and being community centered. In xxiii http://www.asle.org/wp- contrast, the tragic human world is of isolation, content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf tyranny, and the fallen hero. Animals in the comedic xxiv That is what Edward White claims in his genres are docile and pastoral (e.g. sheep), while Foreword to Sidney I. Dobrin and Christian R. animals are predatory and hunters in the tragic (e.g. Weisser, Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition wolves). For the realm of vegetation, the comedic is, (2002). again, pastoral but also represented by gardens, xxv For the comment on Lear, see Ralph W. Black, parks, roses and lotuses. As for the tragic, vegetation http://www.asle.org/wp- is of a wild forest, or as being barren. Cities, a content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf temple, or precious stones represent the comedic xxvi Joanna Cullen Brown, Let Me Enjoy the Earth: mineral realm. The tragic mineral realm is noted for Thomas Hardy and Nature (1990). being a desert, ruins, or "of sinister geometrical xxviihttp://www.asle.org/wp- images" (Frye 1456). Lastly, the water realm is content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf represented by rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, xxviii See my Perspectives: Romantic, Victorian, and the seas, and especially floods, signify the water Modern Literature; and Readings in Oriental sphere.” Literature: Arabian, Indian, and Islamic, both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetypal_literary_crit published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, icism 2015. xxxi Joseph Meeker. The Comedy of Survival: Studies xxix Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An in Literary Ecology. New York: Scribner’s, 1972. Experiment in Ecocriticism.” In Iowa Review 9, no. 1 xxxii (1978): 71-86. Also, In The Ecocriticism Reader: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80 Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Edited by Cheryll 140100673990 Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, 105–123. Athens, GA: xxxiii https://medium.com/@Nick_DeMott/a-brief- University of Georgia Press, 1996. history-of-ecocriticism-a120614d30fc xxx According to Frye in his “The Archetypes of xxxiv http://www.asle.org/wp- Literature” (1951), “Comedy is aligned with spring content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf. because the genre of comedy is characterized by the Also see, Ryden’s Mapping the Invisible Landscape birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also, (1993). spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. Romance and summer are paired together because

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