Literature and Nature

Introduction 27.2014

University of HelsinkiComparative Literature27.10.2014 – 25.11.2014

Examination 8.12.2014

Pekka Raittinen M.A.

Roland Emmerich: The Day After Tomorrow 2004

The ”trope” of environmental catastrophe / disaster?

Terry Eagleton (1996): [Natural] science uses narrative conventions and metaphors too

The long tradition of Western apocalypticism in relation to environmental thought (Thomas Malthus, Rachel Carson, Paul Erlich…)

That leads us to => Ecocriticism”Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of therelationship between literature and the physical environment.” Cheryl Glofelty, 1996

Motives and methods

Kerridge (1998): [The global] environmental catastrophe is also a catastrophe of representationGreg Garrard (2004): Cultural analysis=> ”ecological literacy”Ecocriticism isn’t (and doesn’t claim to be) natural science => a humanistic, hermeunetic field of studyAt the same time it is multi- and cross disciplinary

Nature; definition(s) (Raymond Williams Keywords, 1983)

1. The essential quantity and character of something

2. The inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both

3. The material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings

Greek Physis, Latin Natura

Nature vs. culture – The eternal dichotomy?

Engl. Culture from the Latin Cultura; literally ”to cultive”Roman orator Cicero; animi culturaCato the Elder:De Agri Cultura (”On Farming”)German Romanticism: Bildung

Henry David Thoreau: ”Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art…” Walden, 1854

EcocriticismRoots & History

Ecocriticism

From the 1990’s in the United States and in Great Britain

William Rueckert Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism, 1978

Initially the focus of study was on non-fiction nature writing and poetry of the English Romanticism

Sub-fields: Ecofeminism, eco-Marxism, deep ecology etc.

TranscendentalismThomas Cole: Home in the Woods, 1847

A literary, philosophical and social movement in New England from circa 1830’s to 1860’s

Influences include Unitarian Church, idealism of Immanuel Kant and German and English Romanticism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882): essay Nature (1836)

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

John Muir and American nature writing

John Muir ja Theodor Roosevelt, 1906 Muir (1838 – 1914) Scottish-

American naturalist, author and preservation-activist

Yosemite National Park, first protected 1864, established 1890

My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac 1949

Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire; The Monkey Wrench Gang

Rachel Carson: The Silent Spring, 1961

American Studies and area studies

Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893) => sc. Frontier Thesis

Henry Nash Smith: Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950)

Leo Marx: The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964)

The English tradition

Based on readings of Romantic poets; seminal texts include William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Clare et al.

Marxist cultural critic Raymond Williams: The Country and the City (1973)

Jonathan Bate Romantic Ecology – Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (1991) => The shift from “red” to “green” in literary studies after the Cold War

”The Classics”

Lawrence Buell The Environmental Imagination – Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (1995)Greg Garrard Ecocriticism (2004)Carolyn Merchant The Death of Nature (1980)Simon Schama: Landscape and Memory (1995)

Ecocriticism vs. Environmental History?

In PraxisSo, what does ecocriticism do?

Cheryll Glotfelty(1996); Questions and definitions

How is nature represented?The physical environment and plot?Are the values of the text ecological?Metaphors of ´the land’?The genre of nature writing?Ecological problems in contemporary fiction?The tropes of ”wilderness” and ”wild

nature”?Locality and the category of locus?

Lawrence Buell’s Environmental Text

1. “The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device…”

2. ”The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest”

3. “Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation”

4. Some sense of the environment as a process […] is at least implicit in […] text”

Suomessa – In Finland

Äänekäs kevät – Ekokriittinen kirjallisuustutkimus (Toni Lahtinen & Markku Lehtimäki, toim. SKS 2004)

Kukku Melkas: Historia, halu ja tiedon käärme Aino Kallaksen tuotannossa. SKS 2006.

Mikko Saikku 2005: This Delta, This Land. An Environmental History of Mississippi Delta Floodland.

Toni Lahtinen: Maan höyryävässä sylissä – Luonto, ihminen ja yhteiskunta Timo K. Mukan tuotannossa (WSOY 2014)

John Rushkin: ”Of the Pathetic Fallacy” (Modern Painters, 1843 – 1860)

Pathetic fallacy =>Poetic practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals

ASLE – Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Founded 1992

ISLE Journal – Interdisplinary Studies in Literature and Environment,Founded 1993Editor-in-Chief ecocritic Scott Slovic

At the Crossroads

Michael P. Cohen (2004): ”Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism Under Critique” “Standin' at the crossroads, risin' sun goin'

down. . . got the crossroad blues this mornin', Lord, baby I'm sinkin' down”-- Robert Johnson

“If you want to be an ecocritic, be prepared to explain what you do and be criticized, if not satirized”.

Personal narrative Vs. critical analysis => bad journalistic prose?

Changing paradigms of natural science

Escaping antropocentrism => Mission impossible?

(The (Anglo)American roots of ecocriticism? Problem?)