Ecocriticism is a relatively new discipline in literary studies that is concerned with “the study of

the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty xviii). Some
ecocritics also value literary texts for their engagement with the current environmental crisis and
privilege those works of art or literature that are ecocentric, or represent nonhuman nature and its
interests as equally (if not more) important than the world of human affairs. According to Cheryll
Glotfelty, some of the key questions that ecocritics may ask have to do with the representation
and role of nonhuman nature within the text, ecological or environmental values expressed by it,
or the role of gender in the author’s or the characters’ perception of nature (xix). Lawrence
Buell’s The Environmental Imagination offers a set of four criteria that make a text
“environmental”: presentation of nonhuman environment “not merely as a framing device but as
a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history,”
legitimization of interests other than human, environmental accountability as “part of the text’s
ethical orientation,” and a “sense of environment as a process rather than a constant” (7-8). Since
its emergence as a diverse school of literary and cultural criticism around the 1990s, ecocriticism
has evolved in several directions, producing more specific types of inquiry and theoretical
positions such as ecofeminism, postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental justice criticism, or eco-
Marxism.

Bibliography and works cited:

Buell, Laurence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation

of American Culture. Harvard UP, 1995.

Gladwin, Derek. “Ecocriticism.” Oxford Bibliographies. 26 Jul. 2017.

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-

9780190221911-0014.xml. Accessed 26 Aug. 2018.

Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” The

Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and

Harold Fromm. U of Georgia P, 1996, pp. xv-xxxviii.

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Ecocriticism: An Essay.” Literary Theory and Criticism Notes. 27 Nov.

2016. https://literariness.org/2016/11/27/ecocriticism/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2018.

Rigby, Kate. “Ecocriticism.” ASLE’S Definitions of Ecocriticism Archive. http://www.asle.org/

wp-content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_Rigby.pdf. Accessed 26 Aug. 2018.