Literature and Ecology

Abstract

The long tradition of pastoral and the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century have given critics plenty of experience in thinking about how literary works consider the human place in nature. What is new about ecocriticism is its implicit congruence with the sciences that tell us about Earth’s history, the relation of humans to other life forms, balances and disruptions in living systems. Dana Phillips charges that ecocritics, like too many environmental activists, have been motivated by naive ideas about harmony and holism. Indeed, he says that in spite of appeals to interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinary practice, ‘ecocriticism has been lamentably under-informed by science studies, philosophy of science, environmental history, and ecology’, subjects which professional responsibility ought to require us to know (Phillips 2003, pp. viii–ix). My object here will be to comment on the uneasy relations between literature and science, to discuss the ways writers and literary scholars have appealed to ecological concepts and to talk about how one might gain a working familiarity with ecological and evolutionary science. Then I shall illustrate how an ecocritical pedagogy can explore scientific and environmental emphases in contemporary literature.