Brief introduction of Ecocriticism.

 Name – Hinaba Sarvaiya

Roll No.: 09

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210032

Paper no: 204

Paper name: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies 

Sem: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)

Submitted to: Smt S.B. Gardi Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University

Brief introduction of Ecocriticism.

What is ecocriticism?

Ecocriticism is the interdisciplinary study of the connections between literature and the environment. It draws on contributions from natural scientists, writers, literary critics, anthropologists and historians in examining the differences between nature and its cultural construction.  

Ecocriticism emerged in the 1960s with the start of the environmental movement and the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, but really began to take off in the 1980s. So far, there have been two waves of ecocriticism: the first in the 1980s and the second in the 1990s. 

The first wave emphasized writing about nature as both a field of study and as a meaningful practice. It maintained the distinction between human and nature, but promoted the value of nature and the need to speak and stand up for nature. People believed it was the duty of the humanities and the natural sciences together to raise awareness and come up with solutions for the environmental and climate crisis. 

The second wave expanded upon the first, broadening the reaches of environmentalism. Ecocritics of this wave redefined the term environment to include both nature and urban areas and challenged the distinctions between human and non-human and nature and non-nature. This wave also led to the ecojustice movement by examining the way that the poorest and most oppressed members of a population fall victim to the most adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation. 

What ecocritics do:-

1. They re-read major literary works from an ecocentric perspective, with particular attention to the representation of the natural world. 

2. They extend the applicability of a range of ecocentric concepts, using them of things other than the natural world -concepts such as growth and energy, balance and imbalance, symbiosis and mutuality, and sustainable or unsustainable uses of energy and resources. 

3. They give special canonical emphasis to writers who foreground nature as a major part of their subject matter, such as the American transcendentalists, the British Romantics, the poetry of John Clare, the work of Thomas Hardy and the Georgian poets of the early twentieth century. 

4. They extend the range of literary-critical practice by placing a new emphasis on relevant 'factual' writing, especially reflective topographical material such as essays, travel writing, memoirs, and regional literature. 

5. They turn away from the 'social constructivism' and 'linguistic determinism' of dominant literary theories (with their emphasis on the linguistic and social constructedness of the external world) and instead emphasise ecocentric values of meticulous observation, collective ethical responsibility, and the claims of the world beyond ourselves. 

Types of Ecocriticism:- 

Different types of ecocriticism include: pastoral, wilderness and ecofeminism. 

Pastoral, found primarily in British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy between urban and rural life, often idealizing nature and rural life and demonizing urban life. There are three branches of pastoral ecocriticism: classical, romantic and American. 

Classical is characterized by nostalgia and nature as a place for human relaxation and reflection. 

Romanticism is characterized by portraying rural independence as desirable. 

America emphasizes agrarianism and represents land as a resource to be cultivated. 

Wilderness examines the ways in which the wilderness is constructed, valued and engaged with. There are two branches of wilderness ecocriticism: Old World and New World.

The Old World portrays the wilderness as a scary, threatening place beyond the borders of civilization and as a place of exile. 

New World portrays the wilderness as a place of sanctuary where one can find relaxation and reflection, similar to classical pastoral ecocriticism. 

Ecofeminism analyzes the connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, usually by men. It draws parallels between women and nature, which is often seen as feminine, fertile and the property of men. Ecofeminism also includes other aspects of environmental justice, such as racial environmental justice. There are two branches of ecofeminism:

The first branch of ecofeminism embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature than men on a biological, spiritual and emotional level. This branch is often called radical ecofeminism because it reverses the domination of men over women and nature.

The second branch of ecofeminism contradicts the first, arguing that neither women nor men are more likely to connect with nature.

Poetry & Environment — The Emergence of Eco-Criticism:-

Nature and earth have always been an outlet for emotions offered to artists and writers as a vast expanse of indulgence as well as submergence. This magnified emotion of attachment, loss and immortality towards nature, has often been reflected and explored by the poets and novelists, which gave them the title of a ‘Romantic’. However, when this feeling drew attention from a critical faculty of intellectuals, it came to be known as Green Studies or Eco-Criticism.

The pioneer or the father of this theory in the USA, Cheryll Glotfelty, proposed that “eco-criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.” He also noted in the introduction to ‘The Eco-criticism Reader’, “just as feminist criticism examines language and literature form a gender-conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, environmental critics explore how nature and the natural world are imagined through literary texts.”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;-

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

- William Wordsworth

These words by Wordsworth elucidate with a sense of lament that the world we are all headed towards or are already living is too full of us human beings. He mourns over the furious race of urbanisation in the name of growth and development, claiming that we can’t escape the hectic hustle and bustle of everyday life to be able to stop, reflect and appreciate nature.

Emergence of Eco-Poetry

The dimensions of eco-poetics is quite widespread in terms of varying understandings and execution.

For some, eco-poetics is the making and study of pastoral poetry, or poetry of wilderness and deep ecology. The core principle of eco-criticism is deep ecology which pays equal importance to all organisms irrespective of their instrumental value. While some argue that this is of the kind that explores the human capacity for becoming animal, as well as humanity’s ethically challenged relation to other animals. It also argues to be poetry that confronts disasters and environmental injustices, including the difficulties and opportunities of urban environments. For yet others, eco-poetics is not a matter of theme, but of how certain poetic methods model ecological processes like complexity, non-linearity, feedback loops, and recycling.

Indian nature poets of the late twentieth century renegotiate the relationship of poetry to nature by seeking to avoid both nostalgia for a supposed poetic golden age when transparency and transcendence were available to the lyric poet, and the sense of irony which would call into question any articulation of a coherent self.

Bigger than earth, certainly,

higher than the sky,

more unfathomable than the waters

is this love for this man…

-Kurunthogai 3, Poet Thevakulathār, Kurinji thinai — What She said

This vastness of landscapes woven into a beautiful tapestry of love and emotion describe not just the unfathomable love for a man but also explores the depths of the overarching universe.

the river has water enough

to be poetic about

only once a year

and then it carries away…

-A.K. Ramanujan

Ramanujan’s distress for the unsung river which dries every summer is very poignant yet significant. He calls the river poetic with an abundance of water and flows only once a year before the natural reservoirs dry up due to human apathy and mindlessness of throwing away all sorts of garbage in it without giving a second thought to its pollution and other ill effects.

Whereas traditional form of Japanese poetry, known as haiku, focuses on one brief moment in time, employing a provocative colourful imagery, with a sudden moment of enlightenment and illumination.

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond, splash!

Silence again.

-Matsuo Basho

After killing a spider,

how lonely I feel

in the cold of night.

-Masaoka Shiki

These haiku poetry are a fragment of the writer’s thought in awareness and attention wrapped in a moment of silence and pause. It makes one think over important issues with a calming effect of that of a summer breeze. 

The yellow hornbill,

Returns home

In the hollow of a tree

A yellow hornbill in the Western Ghats of India makes its home in the tree’s hollow where the female roosts with her young ones. The thread of words, from home to hollow, is of from home to hollow, is of significance to me as one finds his home in emptiness and void, always to return to.

Eco-poetry as opposed to other art and literary forms :-

These poems in an ecological framework reflect the past and the present with a mirror of future in just a few lines. Poetic approaches provide a sense of respite but leave us with a troubled mind clouded with restlessness and nonacceptance. Eco poetry investigates — both theoretically and formally —the relationship between nature and culture, language and perception. Poetry, like any other form of art, feels fresh and new one can always come back to, and so is our nature and its ecology. Poetry doesn’t simply supplement the rational intellect, but provides inherently and sometimes incommensurable forms of insight. Because its meanings are neither quantitative nor verifiable, poetry may offer different, subtler and more complex expressions than the language of information and commerce. Through poetry, one can although document what is lost and what lies ahead; it also calls for an action to raise our voices and not let the bounty of nature remain captured in words and images, drowning in our misuse and derangement.

Words:- 1739

Works Citation:-

Agarwal, Priyanka. “Poetry & Environment - the Emergence of Eco-Criticism Up.” Medium, Medium, 19 Aug. 2019, https://medium.com/@agarwalpriyanka/poetry-environment-the-emergence-of-eco-criticism-d7098ee67b70. 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "cultural studies". Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Jul. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-studies. Accessed 5 November 2022.

Howarth, William L. Ecocriticism. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 

“Ecocriticism.” Climate in Arts and History, 30 June 2021, https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/ecocriticism/. 

Howarth, William L. Ecocriticism. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.