Two Books on Eco-criticism - some notes.

1. Beyond Nature Writing, Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, ed. Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace. (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 2001)
[refered to below as 'BNW']

2. The Green Studies Reader, From Romanticism To Ecocriticism, ed. Coupe, Lawrence. (London: Routledge, 2000)
[refered to below as 'GSR']

In a number of respects these two books cover similar territory. Both attempt to survey developments in ecocriticism during 1990's and give a flavour of how the approach developed from "the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment" (Glotfelty: 1993, BNR p.1)  into a more eclectic phenomena where 'green' concerns' relationship to other critical perspectives - feminism, post-colonialism, queer theory and informatics - result in a range of hybrid, interdisciplinary critical responses. As John Elder writes in the introduction to BNW:

Nature writing represents a [...] vital edge. On one side is the literary scholarship that has largely confined itself to the genres of poetry  fiction, drama, along with critical theories declaring texts to be no more than self referential webs of words. On the other side stretches the domain of academic science, where extreme specialization so often muffles the ethical questions and flattens the language. BY combining attentiveness to natural phenomena and processes with an eloquent voice and a narrative line, nature writing has not only helped to re-invigorate education, but has also inspired environmental activism and confirmed the distinctiveness and value of local landscapes.

The range of this ecocritical response can be gleaned from the titles on the contributions:

In BNW:

• The Non Alibi of Alen Scapes, SF and Ecocriticism, Patrick D Murphy, p263
• Discomforting Creatures: Monstrous Natures in Recent Films, Stacy Alaimo, p270
• Performing the Wild: Rethinking Wilderness and Theatre Spaces,m Sweeting and Crochunis, p325
• Beyond Nature/Writing: Virtual Landscapes On line, in Print, and in "Real Life", H. Lewis Ulman p. 341

In GSR:

• Naturalised Woman and Feminized Nature, Kate Soper, p.198
• Deep Form in Art and Nature, Betty and Theodore Roszak, p.223
• The Ode 'To Autmn' as Ecosystem, Jonathan Bate, p.256
• Defending Middle-Earth, Patrick Curry, p.282
• Leslie Silko: Environmental Apocalypticism, Lawrence Buell, p.288

The development of ecocriticism has involved engagement with other key current critical perspectives, a 'greening' of theories, rather than the emergence of a distinctive, ideologically driven, green theory. This being the case, it is unsurprising that both books seek  to position eco-criticism in relation to the received canon as well as more recent work. How the two books engage with tradition is subtly different, and reveals not just the vagaries of editorial  choice, but a more fundamental difference of emphasis which has emerged on each side of the Atlantic.

The roots of green literature in the USA lie in wilderness writing typified by Thoreau's Walden in the nineteenth century and the poetry of Gary Snyder in the twentieth. As BNR shows, ecocriticism has expanded these boundaries considerably to explore the relationship between text and the natural environment in urban settings, the cinema, and virtual reality. As the title of part one indicates - Reevaluating the Roots of Western Attitudes towards Nature - this has involved a substantial re-reading of literature from the past to reevaluate it in relation to ecocritical perspectives. So, in BNR, Betsy Hilbert's essay explores Deuteronomy from an ecotritical standpoint; Lisa J Kiser consider 'Politics of Nature' in Chaucer, and Diane Kelsey McColley considers Paradise Lost as 'Milton's Environmental Epic'.

Whereas BNR, published by the University of Virginia Press has an American bias, GSR concentrates on perspectives developed from a British point of view. As the subtitle of the book intimates - GSR, from Romanticism to Ecocriticism continuity of 'green' ideas with notions about Man and Nature developed by romanticism and Victorian writers is asserted by providing excerpts from Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Morris as well as contemporary commentary.

The difference between the American tradition of wilderness literature, and the British approach which favours a consideration of 'dwelling' within a social landscape has long been acknowledged and understood. Henry Thoreau, writing in 1862 observes:

English Literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets -Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare included - breathes no quite fresh, and in this sense, wild strain. It is essentially tame and civilised literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is pleny of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her  chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.

GSR, p. 23

These issues are important to the development of what I am trying to do. In some ways, a century and a half on,  in England, even the 'greenwood' is in retreat, and it is true that in an American or Australian context there is no 'wilderness' land left in the UK at all. But might that simply be a trick of perspective and scale? John Clare found wilderness in a ditch, even as the processes of industrialisation radically transformed the social fabric of his home village.

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