53 Ecocriticism Lecture Notes and Presentation
Slide One: Ecocriticism: Literature and Nature
Welcome. I’m Dr. Liza Long. In this presentation, we’ll learn more about Ecocriticism, an exciting form of literary criticism that places nature at the center of our target. In this presentation, my goal is to introduce you to ecocriticism and explain why it’s so important. I would say that ecocriticism may be one of the most popular critical theories in literary studies today, which makes sense if you take a minute to look outside at the weather.
One of my goals in writing Critical Worlds was to make sure that my students had at least a brief introduction to ecocriticism, which was not really covered in our previous textbook for the course. Those of you heading on to four-year schools, either in creative writing or in English literature, and especially those of you who want to get a master’s degree or a doctorate, will find that this is a very important and relevant critical lens.
Ecocriticism, at its heart, asks us to look at the intersection of literature and nature. You might also see this method referred to as “green” criticism.
Concerns about climate change are an integral part of this approach. Thinking about climate change and what it means to you personally is one way to start down your path with ecocriticism. Our text for this chapter gives us a second look at a poem we already used for subjective reader response, Catherine Broadwall’s “Dear Phantom Children.” When Catherine first published the poem as part of her environmentally focused collection Shelter in Place, I thought, this is such a great text to use to teach an ecocritical lens, because every part of this poem really addresses the things we were talking about in our chapter. The poem captures our fears, concerns, confusion and also the joy and wonder that surround our interactions with the natural world and how humans are influencing and are influenced by nature.
You may see some overlaps with Marxist and cultural studies criticism, and ecocriticism also has a deconstructive element to it. But where ecocriticism really starts to differ from those other lenses is that it’s more focused on an interdisciplinary approach with science in a way that those other lenses aren’t—or at least, are not to the extent that we see with ecocriticism.
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment when this critical theory emerged. I talk about it emerging in the 1990s, and certainly some of the first texts that were identified as ecocriticism were published in the 1990s. However, the exploration of nature in literature has been going on for a long time. Maybe you’ve heard of pastoral criticism, which is where I focused some of my own research, looking at pastoral poetry by Theocritus and Vergil. There are lots of different ways that critics were exploring nature in texts before it became a formal method. Many people who were doing this kind of work, using texts to interrogate the changes of the natural world that humans were causing, were initially working largely in isolation.
If you watched The Three Body Problem on Netflix (or better yet, read the three books by Cixin Liu—two of them were translated by Hugo winning Ken Liu, one of my favorite sci-fi authors), you might have noticed that two of the main characters frequently reference the biologist Rachel Carson’s 1972 book Silent Spring, a beautifully written foundational ecology text about the role that DDT was playing in decimating songbird populations,
Carson’s book could be credited with inspiring the way literary scholars started thinking about what we are doing to the natural world, and this particular approach continues to be very interdisciplinary. When you look at scholarship, you’ll often see biologists or ecologists or people in environmental studies using literature as a cultural artifact, just like we might see anthropologists using literature as a cultural artifact in a cultural studies approach.
Environmental justice is increasingly a concern with this type of literature. You may have heard of the cli-fi, or climate fiction, genre. This is a subset of science fiction that focuses specifically on climate change. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future is a fantastic example with lots of realistic solutions to climate change that are already in our existing technology, things that we could do now. I like to recommend that book if you are feeling bad about climate change.
To summarize, ecocriticism looks at nature as an artifact in texts, with a contemporary focus on human caused climate change and how that’s reflected in literature, and it’s not limited to any one period. Just like all the other lenses we studied, we can look back at things that were written in Roman times or Greek times or ancient China, for evidence of the intersection between literature and the environment.
Slide Two: Scholarship
The scholarship you’ll read includes a brief excerpt from Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996). This is the most commonly assigned introductory text for this critical method, and I recommend checking it out from the library. I particularly like this quote from the introduction for positioning ecocriticism within the methods we have already studied:
“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 texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies.”
That’s really what it is. If you’re doing that, you’re doing ecocriticism.
Ursula Heise is another prominent scholar working with this method. This is an older article, but she continues to publish in this field, and she gives a good example to start off this essay that I think will resonate with you. We have access to this essay in JSTOR, and I’d recommend reading the whole essay if you have time. Heise writes,
“Environmentalism and ecocriticism aim their critique of modernity at its presumption to know the natural world scientifically, to manipulate it technologically and exploit it economically, and thereby ultimately to create a human sphere apart from it in a historical process that is usually labeled “progress.”
Here, Heise is really interrogating ideas like Manifest Destiny and asking, is that really progress?
Compared with Judith Butler from our previous chapter, these scholars should feel more straightforward to you. As a reminder, we’ll be finishing our work with the textbook this week and moving into the group project, where you’ll create your own literary scholarship. Maybe you’ll choose ecocriticism as your critical method.
Slide Three: How to Do Ecocriticism
So how do we do ecocriticism? Well, just like our other lenses, there’s not necessarily a right or wrong way. These are some things you might consider. You wouldn’t necessarily do all of these things–you could look at setting and landscape, including dystopias. Critics often consider dystopian fiction like Klara and the Sun. In that novel, you could look at the Cootings Machine and its role, for example, or consider how Klara is an intermediary between the Sun (nature) and Josie (a human).
You could also look at nature and the non-human, thinking about how anthropocentric or human centered worldviews are different from biocentric, life centered perspectives, or ecocentric ecosystem center perspectives. Examining literature as an artifact for these types of perspectives gives us an example of how to how to do ecocriticism. As I mentioned, environmental justice and ethics are an important part of this approach. If you’re noticing marginalized communities, for example, these are the same marginalized communities we looked at with postcolonial criticism. We’re taking the postcolonial critique one step further and asking, how has this environmental damage hurt people in the Global South more than it has hurt people in more affluent Western European countries? That’s a very interesting question for literary scholars, especially considering how generative AI development is disproportionately harming the Global South.
Questions of exploitation that are connected to nature or the environment are interesting areas for an ecocriticism approach. Are humans doing something to the environment? Or are they transformative? Those are interesting questions. I think a lot about the Apollo and Daphne myth when I consider human and non-human relationships. Apollo, the sun god, was chasing Daphne, and Daphne prayed to the gods and was transformed into a tree. Ovid’s Metamorphosis is a fascinating text to look for human and non-human relationships and transformative human and non-human relationships. Another example that I think would be fun to look at is Kafka’s Metamorphosis. What does it mean when the author wakes up and is a cockroach?
Ecological crisis and dystopia probably seem like obvious points of inquiry for ecocritics. I already mentioned Klara and the Sun here, but you can probably think of many more examples both from literature and pop culture. The Cli-Fi subgenre of science fiction I mentioned previously is rife with dystopias. I have to admit that I’m very attracted to these types of books. During COVID, I taught Margaret Atwood’s book Year of the Flood, which is part of her Oryx and Crake trilogy, all about ecological crisis and dystopia. That book is really focused on nature and the natural world, and God’s Gardeners who are in total opposition to the scientists creating hybrid life forms.
Finally, you could look at symbolism and imagery. We’ve focused on these things throughout the course, starting with New Criticism, but when we’re doing it with this type of approach, we’re looking specifically for nature symbols. If I were looking at Klara and the Sun, I would probably focus on the sun as a nature symbol and explore what that means in the context of the nonhuman narrator.
The goal is to have fun, of course, while also learning more about literature.
Slide Four: Ecocriticism and Place
I’m seeing so many dissertations and articles using ecocriticism and the concept of place. You’ll recall that we talked about how queer theory had started to challenge our conceptions of linear space and time right? Ecocriticism similarly challenges our perceptions of place—what place actually means and how it functions. Here are a few specific areas of inquiry you could consider:
Identity and place: with this approach, you can see how there would be some intersection with postcolonial criticism or perhaps ethnic studies.
Cultural and historical context of place looks at historical exploitation or conservation. For example, consider our reverence of certain landscapes, or how places hold the memories and histories of communities.
Place Attachment and sense of place: You could look at how literature shows these emotional bonds. Why is place important to the characters? How does it shape the narrative?
Environmental awareness and place asks us to consider things like pollution, deforestation, urban sprawl, climate change, impacts, with a focus on
Intersections of place and power: this is a reminder that power dynamics underscores the environmental justice approaches of ecocriticism in the same way that it underscores postcolonial criticism and to some extent, ethnic studies. It’s an extension of those theoretical approaches, bringing in the natural world and the environment.
Mythological and symbolic dimensions of place—I love this approach. If you take my Survey of World Mythology class, we actually spend a whole unit talking about symbolic places like the cave, the mountain, the tree of life, those types of symbolic places like the garden, places that have resonance for us as a species.
As you can see, ecocriticism gives us some fascinating entry points to investigate literary texts.
Slide Five: Dear Phantom Children
As I mentioned at the beginning, I was so delighted that Catherine Broadwall, who is a dear friend, agreed to let me republish this poem in our textbook. We originally encountered this as one of the practicing reader response texts in Part Three, where I asked for your subjective reader response to the poem, and certainly, thinking about climate change and how it affects you is one valid subjective reader response approach. But now we will take an ecocriticism approach to the same text. Please listen and take a few notes as I read the poem.
Dear phantom children
who hover near the futon frame
like lavender genies or wisps
of feathered incense smoke, take heed—
we get it. You enjoy the look
of daffodils and jello. It might be fun
to dress you as a puppy or a cub. We’ve pushed
our share of strollers watching neighbor ladies’
babies, and yes, the dappling of sun on plaid
and board book can be sweet. The thing is,
spirits, we can barely even hold each other—
our other hands latched to the railing of this speeding ship.
*
To those already here, well, welcome
to holey vessel. We’ll do our best
to patch it up before it’s sink or
kill. We’re trying not to polar bear
ourselves or leave you ice cubes
from which you’ll have to hop and
hop, precarious wayfarer. Democracy,
the ultimate hair-tearing-out group project.
Humanity, the raft that everybody wants
to steer. For now, don’t worry, babies; look—
aurora borealis. Take a load off, babies; look
at Ursa Major rise.
With an ecocriticism approach, we want to focus on imagery that intersects with the natural world. Look at how the poem juxtaposes positive images of nature—“the dappling of sun on plaid”—with negative ones—“before it’s sink or/ kill.” I also love the way the poet uses nouns as verbs: “We’re trying not to polar bear ourselves.”
When you read the poem as an ecocritic, do you think its overall tone is negative toward the environment or positive? While there are certainly plenty of warnings about climate change, I see the last couplet as largely positive. It’s saying, humanity, nature’s awesome. Go outside and look at the stars,
The poem was originally titled “Birth rates drop to historic lows among Millennials. Here’s what they have to say about it.” The poem explores some of the fears that we have for the next generation because of climate change, and what are we leaving them, asking, is it even responsible to bring children into that world?
Slide Six: Terms to Use
I took this list from the ecocriticism scholar Lawrence Buell and his 2005 book, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. This is a glossary of selective terms that Buell put together, and I encourage you to read the book (or at least the glossary) for more information.
With anthropocentrism, we consider how humans place themselves at the center pretty much everything and how this is reflected in literary texts. In contrast, biocentrism is where instead of centering humans, we center life. What happens if we center all life, and we don’t pull humans out as somehow special? How might we approach a text differently if we read it that way?
The bioregion is a particular area that might have certain characteristics. A cyborg is a part human, part tech. We’re increasingly seeing the word dystopia associated now with the development of generative artificial intelligence. A lot of what we’re seeing in fiction today has to do with climate change.
But it’s not all negative. With terms like ecocentrism, ecology, and environmental justice, we are considering how texts can promote a more balanced approach to the environment, for example, when we use literature as an artifact to think about sustainability for nature and the natural world.
As I mentioned, I’m very interested in the history of pastoral poetry. This is poetry that’s set out in the countryside, often involving shepherds, and it’s a long tradition in the western canon. Why are people who aren’t shepherds so interested in the pastoral life? How does pastoral poetry represent a kind of fantasy for city dwellers? Can you think of any current examples of this? I’m thinking about Instagram and certain influencer accounts like Ballerina Farm. What’s the attraction to these poems?
Wilderness and wildness hold a similar fascination for us. Think about Jack London’s novels, for example, or to use an Idaho writer, Vardis Fisher and Mountain Man.
Slide Seven: Limitations of Ecocriticism
Of course, as with any critical method, there are some limits to this approach. It’s just so hard to pull ourselves out of the center, isn’t it? Dealing with ingrained anthropocentrism can be a challenge.
Early versions of ecocriticism tended to focus on literature from Western cultures. I think we are seeing less of this now, but it’s still a concern and possible limitation.
The interdisciplinary nature of ecocriticism is both a feature and a bug. Personally, I think it’s really cool that we can make literary texts the subject of inquiry for scientists, but different disciplines have different norms. This approach can also lead to superficial applications of scientific concepts, or, on the other side, it can lead to lazy literary analysis. Whenever I think of interdisciplinary challenges, I think about the way that quantum physics just seems to be applied to anything and everything. “Oh, you don’t understand something? That’s quantum physics! Quantum physics explains everything!” Does it though?
Political and ideological biases could be seen as a limit, but it’s also a feature of this approach. Just like Marxist criticism contains an inherent critique of capitalism, ecocriticism focuses on environmental activism. So the question to keep that in mind here is whether we are getting the best reading of a literary text with this approach. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a problem that people are using literature to highlight and promote their environmental activism and sustainability, as long as people are really clear on their biases, but that would be the case for any argument, right?
A final limitation is that by focusing on the natural world, we can incorrectly universalize a definition of nature or presuppose that everyone sees nature the same way, and this simply isn’t true. I encourage you to learn more about Indigenous ways of knowing if you’d like some specific examples of this.
Slide Eight: Checklist and Theoretical Response
Here’s your checklist for your theoretical response. Remember that you don’t have to do all these things. Any one of them might be an interesting approach to take. I hope you like the texts that I’ve chosen. The Yeats poem about wandering Aengus is one of my personal favorites.
I’m surprisingly happy with the way the AI model essay turned out for this section. For most of the textbook, I used ChatGPT 3.5 because it was the free version that most of my students could use. But for this essay, I used the more current ChatGPT 4.0 model. It’s a much more robust essay than the ones that 3.5 was writing, but it still has some issues, as you’ll see in my annotations.
It’s especially interesting to me to use an ecocritical lens on this very old, abstruse and difficult English poem, “The Canonization.” I deliberately chose a poem that’s difficult to understand throughout the book, so that we could test out these different lenses. I think this model essay really shows you what an ecocriticism essay at this level would look like. I’ve also included a student essay example for you to review.
Choose your favorite of the three texts and practice using the terminology and checklist in your theoretical response. If you use generative AI to help you with your response, make sure you acknowledge and cite it.
Have a great week, and I hope you enjoy practicing ecocriticism as a theoretical approach to literary texts.
