The Usual Practice of Ecocriticism

Introduction

Nature and literature have always shared a close relationship as is recorded in the works of poets and other writers in almost all the cultures in the world, since ages. Now-a-days the intimate relationships is being analysed between the natural and social world. The literary critic tries to analyse that, how is nature documented by the writers in their works. In this connection we have two important terms- ecology and ecocriticism.

Ecocriticism is by nature interdisciplinary, it draws on environmental studies, the natural sciences and cultural and social studies.

The awareness towards nature has been there since the dawn of civilization. The poets, artists and thinkers have been emphasising the close relationship between nature and man from times immemorial. Human life is inconceivable without the presence of wider nature.

Ecocriticism investigates the relation between humans and physical world in literature. It deals with the environmental and cultural issues and the attitudes towards nature presented in literature. It studies how individual in society behave, react or interact with nature and ecological aspects.

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This form of criticism has caught a lot of attention of scholars during recent decades due to higher social emphasis on environment destruction and increased technology.

It is a fresh way of analysing and interpreting literary text, which being new dimensions to the field of literary and theoretical studies. It is a deliberate approach that is also known by other terms including 'green (cultural) studies', 'oikopoetics' and 'environmental literary criticism'. This is the criticism which is earth centered.

Origin and definition of Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism was heralded in mid 1990s, with the publication of two seminal works: 'The ecocriticism reader edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm and the 'Environmental Imagination' by Lawrence Buell.

Different thinkers and critics have used the approach and mode variously and defined the term 'ecocriticism' differently, but their basic concerns being similar, the approach generally focus on the relationship between man and the mother earth. It is the study of environment in literature from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyse the physical nature and seeks to get possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation.

The word 'ecocriticism' first appeared in an essay entitled 'Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in ecocriticism' written by William Rueckert in 1978. It was apparently inactive in critical vocabulary till 1989, Western Literature Association Meeting (in Loeur d'Alene), when Cheryll Glotfelty used the term as 'the study of nature writing'. At that time Cheryll Glotfelty was graduate student at cornell and now Assistant professor of literature and Environment at the university of Nevda, Reno.

This field of literary theory remained marginal until the 1990, when The Association for the study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) was established in 1992 along with the interdisciplinary studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE) in 1993. ASLE was founded by group of scholars and writers interested in exploring the meaning of the natural environment and the complexities of human relationships with each other.

As an acknowledged founder of Ecocritics in United States of America Cheryll Glotfelty says:

"Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of relationship between nature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender conscious perspective and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth- centred approach to literary studies." (1996:XVII)

Glotfelty seeks to find how nature is represented in literature; how the concept of wilderness has been changed over time, how science open itself to literary analysis. Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty at the university of Nevda, Reno. Glotfelty's influenced not only the ecological nature writing wing of American studies but a large number of other people also.

She indicates that in postmodern age the profession of English literature must 'redraw the boundaries' and 'remap' the rapidly changing form of literary studies. The global environmental crisis was being ignored by the literary scholars. Glotfelty said that, to the environmental issue English profession has failed to respond in any significant way.

Laurence Buell, in a wide ranging survey of pastoralism in American Literature, find out the experience of American pastoral in a variety of social and political contexts, gender-based, pragmatic, aesthetic and environmental. He considers the emergent threat of ecological devastation and sees environmental pressure as tending to increase the importance of pastoralism as a literary and cultural force in future.

The Environmental Imagination

In his book entitled The Environmental Imagination (1995) Buell insists that this study must be "conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis" (12). His work is thus constitutional to ecocriticism. His magnificent on Henry David Thoreau, which illustrate Thoreau's nature writing and the configuration of American culture.

Timothy Morton complements Buell's work by following the nature in ecocriticism in his outstanding work entitled Ecology without nature: Rethinking Environmental Asthetics (1998). Morton has recorded the changing definition of 'nature' and reiterating Buell to a certain extent. In Writing the Enivironment (1998) Richard Kerridge defines ecocriticism as:

"The Ecocritics want to track environmental ideas and representations wherever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be taking place, often part concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of all ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis" (5).

The realm of ecocriticism is very vast as it is not bounded to any literary genre. A leading figure in the development of ecocriticism is Glen A. love, for years he has been teaching and writing earnest for bringing communication between the natural sciences and humanities close together. Glen Love in his book Practical Ecocriticism (2003) raised a question that, What does human nature has to do with ecocriticism?

He says in introductory part of book:

"At the beginning of the third Millennium and of a new century often heralded as "the century of the environment", a coherent and broadly based movement embracing literary environmental interconnections, commonly termed "ecocriticism" is emerging . . . Ecocriticism unlike all other forms of literary enquiry, encompasses non-human as well as human context and considerations, on this claim, ecocriticism bases its challenge to much postmodern critical discourse as well as to the critical system of the past" (3).

Glen A. Love opens with the premise that "human behaviour is not an empty vessel whose only input will be that provided by culture, but is strongly influenced by genetic orientations that underlie and modify, or are modified by cultural influences"(3).

In his book Practical Ecocriticism: Biology and the Environment (2003), he traces the issue of "two cultures" face together. He brings into consideration that a great amount of world literature deals with the relationship between human and nature. Ecocritics, according to him trying to read literature with a fresh perspective to the developing voice of nature. This "voice" certainly be depicted in literature only, through human representation of non-human and countryside.