ECOCRITICISM

 ECOCRITICISM

INTRODUCTION:

Ever wonder what goes through the mind of a squirrel as it eats an acorn? No? How about what goes through the mind of an acorn as it's being eaten by a squirrel? Still no?

Well, maybe it's time to start. Let's get green, people. And we don't just mean in a treehugger kind of way. If you use ecocriticism to analyze a text, you'll discover just how much nature is looking back at you while you read.

Take, for example, the story we began with that squirrel and his tasty acorn. If you analyze this narrative using more established modes of literary theory, you probably won't think much about what a squirrel actually is. And why it loves to eat acorns so stinkin' much. Instead, your analysis will probably sound something like this:

"The acorn in this story is a symbol for a woman's broken heart. The squirrel is a stand-in for a cheating husband chewing up the love of his wife and spitting it out onto the cold, hard ground."

(Now picture us saying that in a tweed jacket, puffing on a pipe. Stop. Giggling. Stop it.)

When people engage with stories about animals or acorns or trees, we have this wacky tendency to think they're all about us. Take that old classic, Animal Farm. As you read Animal Farm, you might think, "Man, the mean pig acts a lot like my gym teacher. This story reminds me so much of my childhood."

Soon, you arrive at a literary analysis that's totally centred on your puny little human thoughts, actions, desires, and motivations. But whatever happened to the pig itself? And the squirrel? And the acorn? (Sorry, the internet has made us kind of obsessed with squirrels.)

Anyway, our point is this: in case you haven't noticed, humans can be very self-centred. Or, to dress our claim up in fancier terms, we often think in anthropocentric ways. Ecocriticism wants us to take a step back from our navel-gazing and ask such questions as:

• What do we mean, exactly, when we say "nature"? What is and isn't part of "nature"?

• How have people related to nature in different ways at different points in history?

•What's all that got to do with evolving technologies, industrialism, and post-industrialism?

• Is "place"-like, under an oak tree with a squirrel eating a nut-a distinctive lens through which we should read literature and see the world?

• What do our different approaches to the natural world—e.g., Rape and pillage?

Preserve? Adore? What?-and to writing about the natural world, tell us about human development throughout history? What do they tell us about nature itself? About subjectivity and objectivity?

Eco-Interdisciplinarians 

Right. So. Ecocritics consider the many relations between literature and the natural world. And in seeking to expand our understanding of the environment, they crank that music and let literary studies party with the hard sciences. Rock.

Now let's put our ecocritic hats on and return to Animal Farm for a moment. Orwell used pigs to symbolize fascist tyrants, yes. But if you look for clues as to the science of pig behaviour inside the text, you'll find ways to enrich your understanding of this symbol. Did you know that pigs are really smart animals-kind of like dolphins, and, well, humans?

And, did you know that their physiologies are really similar to the human body as well?

That's why radical doctor-types can transplant genetically modified pig hearts into monkeys… and maybe, someday, into humans. So, let's check in on our Metaphoric Depth-o- Meter; now, why do you think Orwell chose to put pigs on his animal farm?

(Hint: it's not just because piggish means greedy or unpleasant. Though that is one reason.)

Besides, doesn't it feel good to be an interdisciplinary scholar? We think so. And that's why we like this newfangled Ecocriticism movement so much; ecocritics analyze literature with the primary text in one hand and a science book in the other.

Before long, biology is talking to Victorian studies. And climatology gets to chill with the Transcendentalists. Horticulture even gets the low-down about the Dutch tulip bulb from European History.

All this scholastic hand-holding and Kumbaya-ing is supposed to help us think of the world as an entity that exists outside of ourselves. But also as a fundamental force that shapes us as much as we shape it. In case you haven't caught our drift: this is literary environmental activism, baby.

The Big Eco-Heads

Ecocriticism is a young literary theory. Just a toddler, really. (Spell check won't even allow the word yet). So there's still a lot of work to do, and few scholars who're doing it. For now.

As of Shmoop-O'Clock Today, we've got this short-list batting for Team Ecocriticism:

• Lawrence Buell. He thinks we lack imagination when we analyze nature. He's on that whole, "Not every pig is a fascist just because Orwell said it was" bandwagon.

• Serpil Oppermann. Ole Serpy stresses the need for this theory to be interdisciplinary. Like, how are we supposed to wrap our little minds around the real meaning of the tree in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn if we don't even understand how photosynthesis works?

• Dana Phillips. This guy thinks we over-romanticize nature, and that contemporary nature writing is basically a crock. He'd really like for us to re-think what we mean when we use the word nature to begin with, actually.

These three proud lit crit parents don't always get along. But they all agree on one central notion: both our imaginations and understandings of the environment expand when we dissect the relations between humans, the natural world, and the text.

Why Should I Care?

Why Should Readers Care?

When most lit critics analyze texts, all they think about is me, me, me. What do The Canterbury Tales have to do with my contemporary life? With my beauty and my flaws and all o' that?

But humans didn't invent the material world that authors write about—the rose (as a rose, not just as a symbol), California's redwood forests, and so on. As people, we've just fashioned particular ways of talking and writing about the material world. So, Ecocriticism challenges us with this question:

Why read literature as though it's all about us, when so much of what gets captured in The Canon is not human—is more than human, even?

Ecocritics want us to

1. investigate the tendency to see ourselves in every little ant (that is, to anthropomorphize our natural world) tells us about the human condition.

2. analyze how the actual real, scientific facts of nature influence our lives and our literature.

So reading The Canterbury Tales with our Ecocriticism Eyeballs in, we might ask: How did disease—particularly the Bubonic Plague —influence the language of these tales?

And what about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the literature of George Eliot?

What's up with those volcanoes and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

And that's why you should care about Ecocriticism, kiddos: it helps to wrest us out of ourselves and into the real world. Now, stay tuned for the answer to one of the tantalizing questions we've just raised.

Why Should Theorists Care?

We bet you thought we were going to say, "because squirrels are cute and there are tons of pictures of them on the internet," didn't you? Well, we aim to surprise. And we know that theorists should care about Ecocriticism for much more important reasons than "Nature is rad" and "Animals are adorable."

See, incorporating the scientific study of natural objects into literary criticism helps scholars to better understand how nature might be its own force in literature-one that operates outside of human principles and motivations. It grants new insight into people.

When we view great texts through a less anthropocentric lens, we can reveal the hidden ways volcanoes and clouds and other awesome nature-type stuff influence human thought and behaviour. We may even get at the root (pun intended) of why we're so obsessed with seeing ourselves in every overturned leaf and glassy pond. Quick, someone call Narcissus and tell that old scoundrel his secrets are about to be revealed.

ECOCRITICISM BUZZWORDS

Interdisciplinary

A rose can be a symbol of love. A rose is also a woody perennial that's part of the genus Rosa. A rose is also a royal flower. Get it?

A rose can be studied from the perspectives of philosophy, botany, and history. And more. And that's the heart of interdisciplinarity: bringing knowledge from different scholarly arenas to bear on your analysis of the same person, place, or thing.

Now go do. You've got a lot of disciplines to read up on.

Nature

Why in the world would we need a definition of the word nature, you ask? It's obvious, isn't it? Nature, is, like, everything in the world that isn't man-made: grass, the sun, wolves (that aren't specifically bred by humans to be scary super-wolves/werewolves-who-howl-at-the moon- and-are-played-in-movies-by-Taylor-Lautner), right?

Hold your proverbial horses, Shmoopers. Ecocritics get into some pretty heated arguments about what does and doesn't qualify as nature. Why? Well, they're looking to problematize (scholars sure do lurv to problematize things) humans' self-centred views of the natural world.

So, they pit (at least) two possible definitions of nature against each other:

Nature = A place where humans are not—both physically and metaphorically speaking.

Nature = Everything everywhere. All nature, all the time.

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is basically a political movement that strives to make people care equally about all creatures that live in any single environment. As in get over yourselves, humans. Other stuff lives on this planet, too. Sound familiar?

Ask your Resident Hippie for more information.

Anthropocentrism

People tend to see themselves everywhere, in everything. Man, that leaf sure looks like my lover's hand. And that pig in Animal Farm was *totes* my high school gym teacher. When anthropocentrism enters the scene, nothing can be analyzed without being compared to or informed by human perception, affinities, desires, and all that jazz. Ecocriticism pushes back against this navel-gazing tendency of ours and asks us to consider nature on its own terms.

It also asks us to consider how we consider nature, at different historical moments. I know, we just meta-ed you so hard it hurts. Maybe you should seek a natural remedy. Har har.

Ecology

Eco, from the Greek oikos, means "home," while ology, "the study of." Ecology: The study of home.

Okay, okay, we'll stop messing around with language and break it down for you. This is essentially the study of how living things interact with each other and their environments.

Take, for example, how mice and frogs sometimes befriend each other in India. And the results are positively adorable.

Er, we mean fascinating. We're serious scientists who are seriously serious about our science.

We promise.

New Materialism

You know how some Great Thinkers like to talk about how humans can't be reduced to their physical properties, because people are really, really special? And they reference all that ooey-gooey, esoteric stuff, like the soul? Well, the New Materialists say: nonsense.

They say: People are made up of their biological bits. This means that even human thought and human creativity—those lofty qualities we often like to believe elevate us above other animals—are just part and parcel of human physiology.

You can see how this idea might get some folks really riled up. But riddle us this, Shmoopers: is a frat guy really a frat guy without his frat house and his beer pong? Or is there something about The Dude, something in his person or his essence, that's essentially frat-y?

We're not sure either.

Science

Oh, c'mon, you know this one. Science is that rigorous, empirical business that people like you get into when they observe something about the world, then make a hypothesis about how that thing works, and then test their hypothesis. Rinse. Revise or trash the original hypothesis. Repeat.

Cure cancer and HIV. (We hope.)

Wilderness

That magical land that's far, far away from human cities, cars, annoying appliances, and repetitive office work.

Or: Go beyond the reach of your wifi router. Then go further. Look around you. You just may be in the wilderness.

Conservation

Conservation is all about preserving this super-sweet world we inhabit for future generations of humans. Conservationists, then, spend a lot of time thinking up ways to reduce people's negative impact on the environment (which is home to many, many species of squirrels, mind you), while also promoting "the natural order of things."

"Reduce, reuse, recycle." Captain Planet. "Only you can prevent forest fires." "Just say no." Okay, maybe not that last one. But you get what we're driving at. (A greener world, duh.)

"Much ecocriticism has taken for granted that its task is to overcome anthropocentrism, just as feminism seeks to overcome androcentrism. The metaphysical argument for biocentrism is meant to sustain moral claims about the intrinsic value of the natural world, which will in turn affect our attitudes and behaviour towards nature."― Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism

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