What is Ecocriticism?

by David Taylor

What is ecocriticism? Ecocriticism is certainly a broad, gangly term that groups very disparate types of criticism: some overtly polemic, others seemingly disinterested in cultural critique. To my mind, ecocriticism is an inherently polemic form of scholarship (most often ecological) because in examining cultural constructions of environment ecocriticism suggests a revaluation of the readers' own cultural constructions of environment.

Only recently (20-30 years) has literary criticism begun to examine its usefulness and purpose in a broader notion of society. Previously, literary criticism has discussed notions of the pastoral, romantic wilderness, literary naturalism, and such, but such criticism has focused more on the literary style of the text in order to place it into a canonical framework (an aesthetic consideration only) than on the human descriptions of an actual landscape. This change in values (as I see it, ecocriticism) parallels that of literary criticism's movement away from New Criticism (perhaps is an intellectual byproduct). Terry Eagleton says of New Criticism's view of interpretation:

Meaning was public and objective, inscribed in the very language of the literary text, not a question of some putative ghostly impulse in a long-dead author's head, or the arbitrary private significances a reader might attach to his words. (48 Literary Theory: An Introduction)
Deconstructionist critics have pointed out that such a hermeneutics ignores the milieu in which the text is read, the historical concerns of and influences on the author, and, of course, the cultural background of the reader. Ecocriticism also reflects similar values by stressing the importance of the cultural constructions of environment in the text (and by the reader) instead of focusing on the text's similarities with accepted genres and literary movements.

Alexander Wilson claims "the culture of nature--the ways we think, teach, talk about, and construct the natural world--is as important a terrain as the land itself." The effect that ecocriticism will have is the change that takes place as a result of the tenuous connection that exists between action and the criticism of ideology (a very tenuous connection). I'm not suggesting that we coerce our students to march in picket lines or spike trees; those are also cultural constructions of environment (to which we may or may not be sympathetic). Rather I'm suggesting that we be open about the polemics of ecocriticism with our students and readers. The choice of action or non-action is theirs.

David Taylor, Converse College