Ecocriticism: Storytelling, Values, Communication, Contact

by Scott Slovic

I have just spent eleven months in Japan, serving as a kind of temporary "nature writing guru" among scholars and students who had, a year ago, never heard of "ecocriticism" or "nature writing." Now, after months of travelling and lecturing, after countless introductory spiels on "literature and environment" (my lecturing voice invaded my dreams at night) and the distribution of examples of nature writing in both Japanese and English, there is a budding new movement in this field on those islands of mountains, rice fields, temples, skyscrapers. and haiku. A Japanese branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, with about sixty founding members, got started in May. In my introductory talks on nature writing and environmentally conscious literary scholarship, this is what I said about "ecocriticism": "the term means either the study of nature writing by way of any scholarly approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and human-nature relationships in any literary text, even texts that seem (at first glance) oblivious of the nonhuman world. This new enthusiasm for the study of 'literature and environment' in the United States is not only a reaction to the impressive aesthetic achievement of American nature writing, but an indication of contemporary society's growing consciousness of the importance and fragility of the nonhuman world." That's my general description of this field, but there are several other basic ideas/strategies that, I think, are essential for ecocritics to keep in mind, essential to the vitality and meaningfulness of what we're doing. Since I'm in the habit of playing the guru role, let me put these in the form of rules or bits of advice:

1. Storytelling. Ecocritics should tell stories, should use narrative as a constant or intermittent strategy for literary analysis. The purpose is not to compete with the literature itself, but simply to illuminate and appreciate the context of reading--that is, to embrace the literary text as language that somehow contributes to our lives "out in the world." We must not reduce our scholarship to an arid, hyper-intellectual game, devoid of smells and tastes, devoid of actual experience. Encounter the world and literature together, then report about the conjunctions, the intersecting patterns. Analyze and explain literature through storytelling--or tell your own stories and then, subsequently, show how contact with the world shapes your responses to texts. See John Elder's Imagining the Earth (1985) and Kent Ryden's Mapping the Invisible Landscape (1993) for examples of intermittent "narrative scholarship." I've experimented with it at the end of Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing (1992).

2. Values. For several years I've pondered a bold claim that Glen Love made in "Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism" (WAL, Nov. 1990). I often begin my courses with this thought, transforming Love's assertion into a question: could it be that "the most important function of literature today is to redirect human consciousness to a full consideration of its place in a threatened natural world"? This seems to throw "scholarly poise and neutrality" out the window. But it occurs to me more and more these days that literature is, indeed, much more than an intellectual toy, created for the pleasure of clever, but "irresponsible," critics who resist taking stances on what's happening in the world. Literary scholarship and literature itself are, on the most fundamental level, associated with human values and attitudes. We should, as critics and teachers of literature, consider how literary expression challenges and directs readers to decide what in the world is meaningful/important to them. We can't afford to shy away from the issue of values--this is the proper domain of literary studies (and such fields as philosophy and religious studies), and it's one reason why the humanities should be a crucial part of university programs in environmental studies.

3. Communication. Try not to waste words and paper. If you have something to say, say it clearly and directly--communicate. So much literary scholarship is unreadable garbage, apparently not intended for a real audience. I think ecocritics, of all people, ought to challenge themselves to use language with clarity and elegance. Those of us who study nature writing have some of the world's best models (writing that communicates) in front of us day after day.

4. Contact. This past summer, two Japanese nature writing scholars arranged for me to visit eighty-four-year-old farmer/philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka, the author of The One-Straw Revolution, in the mountains outside of Matsuyama on the southern island of Shikoku. After spending a few hours walking around Fukuoka-san's jungle-like orchards, we went to have tea in a primitive hut. While drinking tea, we listened to Fukuoka-san talk about farming and nature. Then I asked him something I had been wondering during our entire visit. Did he think it might be possible for the university to contribute anything to our understanding of nature? (What did he think about these three literature professors who had come to visit him?) Fukuoka-san seemed to look right past me, and then he said (in Japanese), "Listen to the bird sing." I thought he simply hadn't heard my question or that he found it unimportant. But everyone stopped talking and, sure enough, there was a nightingale ("uguisu" in Japanese) calling outside the hut. Then Fukuoka-san's assistant leaned over to me and whispered, "He means, it is possible if you have a simple mind." In other words, those of us who work at universities might be able to contribute to society's understanding of nature if we remember to pay attention to nature itself, if we don't lose ourselves in lectures, theories, texts, laboratories. A powerful admonition: ecocritics need contact not just with literature and not just with each other, but with the physical world.

Scott Slovic, Southwest Texas State University [now at the University of Nevada, Reno]