MA Eco-criticism and Nature Writing

Overview

Since the start of the scientific age literary commentary on the aesthetics and meaning of natural phenomena has always accompanied scientific exegesis. Gilbert White and later Henry David Thoreau turned nature writing into an art, which has gone on to become an industry, establishing the context for the subsequent development of visual nature documentary in film and TV. Eco-criticism is a broad genre of literary criticism that reflects systematically on the relationship between literature and non-human nature. This course reviews recent developments in eco-critical analysis whilst introducing students to the tradition of nature writing since Gilbert White. Students are given the opportunity to compare the work of a wide range of authors including Gilbert White, Darwin, Christopher Jeffries, John Burroughts, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, Rachel Carson, Sigurd F Olson, Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, John Janovy and Annie Dillard. Course modules also explore the emergence of a canon in writing about wild-nature, and the influence of this tradition in framing the wider environmentalist sensibility. More specific foci for study and debate include issues such as the role of the landscape in various works of literature, the role of implicit or explicit environmental values and the changing meanings attributed to the word 'nature'. Working with a writer_in_residence, students are also able to develop their own creative writing skills.

Indicative Reading

  • Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.
  • Cohen, Michael P. "Blues in Green: Eco-criticism Under Critique." Environmental History 9. 1 (January 2004): 9-36.
  • Estok, Simon C. (2001). "A Report Card on Eco-criticism." AUMLA 96 (November): 200-38.
  • Estok, Simon C. (1999). "Letter," Forum on Literatures of the Environment, PMLA 114.5 (Oct. 1999): 1095-1096.
  • Estok, Simon C. (2005). "Shakespeare and Eco-criticism: An Analysis of 'Home' and 'Power' in King Lear." AUMLA 103 (May 2005): 15-41.
    Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (Eds). The Eco-criticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia, 1996.
  • Gomides, Camilo. 'Putting a New Definition of Eco-criticism to the Test: The Case of The Burning Season, a film (mal)Adaptation". ISLE Vol. 13.1 Winter 2006 13-23.
  • Meeker, Joseph W. "The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology." New York: Scribner's, 1972.
  • Phillips, Dana. The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture, and Literature in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Rueckert, William. "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Eco-criticism." Iowa Review 9.1 (Winter 1978): 71-86.
  • Wilson, Thomas M. The Recurrent Green Universe of John Fowles. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006.

Nature writing

  • Daniel G Payne (1996) Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics (University Press of New England)
  • Thomas J Lyon (2001) This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing. 2nd edition
  • Robert Finch (Ed) (2002) Nature Writing. The Tradition in English (London: W W Norton)
  • Gilbert White (1788) A natural history and antiquities of Selbourne (London: Benjamin & White and Sons)
  • Henry David Thoreau, (1854) Walden, or life in the woods (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) PS3048
  • John Muir, (1911) My first summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin)
  • Mary Austin, ([1903] 1924) The Land of Little Rain (New York: Century)
  • Aldo Leopold, (1949) A sand county almanac (Oxford University Press)
  • Loren Eiseley, (1957) The Immense Journey An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature (New York: Random House)
  • - (1978) The Star Thrower (Times Books. Random House)
  • John Burroughs (1907) Locusts and Wild Honey (Edinburgh); (1886) Signs and Seasons (Edinburgh); (1884) Wake-Robin (Edinburgh); (1920) Accepting the Universe: Essays in Naturalism (NY: Russell & Russell)
  • Rachel Carson (1962) Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin); (1951) The sea around us (Oxford University Press); (1955) The edge of the sea (Boston: Houghton Mifflin);
  • Wendell Berry, (1977) The Unsettling of America (San Franciso: Sierra Books)
  • Annie Dillard ([1974] 1998) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Perennial)
  • Edward Abbey ([1975] 1990) The monkey wrench gang ( Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press).
  • ([1968] 1990) Desert Solitaire (Pocket Books)
  • Barry Lopez (1980) River notes. The dance of the herons (Avon)
  • -- (1978) Of Wolves and Men
  • -- (1983) Desert Notes. Reflections in the eye of the raven (Avon)
  • -- (1986) Arctic Dreams:: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (New York: Scribner's)
  • John Janovy (1980) Yellow Legs
  • --- (1978) Keith County Journal
  • Gary Snyder (2004) The Practice of the Wild: Essays (Shoemaker & Hoard, Div of Avalon Publishing Group)
  • Bill McKibben (1990) The End of Nature (New York: Double Day)

Secondary Texts

  • Daniel G Payne (1996) Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics (University Press of New England)
  • Thomas J Lyon (2001) This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing. 2nd edition (Milkweed Editions)
  • Robert Finch (Ed) (2002) Nature Writing. The Tradition in English (London: W W Norton)
  • Don Scheese (2002) Nature Writing. The Pastoral Impulse in America (Routledge)
  • Worster, Donald (1994) Nature's economy a history of ecological ideas (Cambridge Cambridge U.P.)
  • Lawrence Buell (1996) The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Harvard University Press)
  • J Baird Callicot & Michael P Nelson (1998) The Great New Wilderness Debate: An Expansive Collection of Writings Defining Wilderness from John Muir to Gary Snyder (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press)
  • Nash,R (1969) Wilderness and the American Mind (Yale)
  • Keith Thomas (1983) Man and the Natural World: Changing attitudes in England 1500-1800 (Oxford)
  • Stewart,F (1994) A Natural History of Nature Writing (Shearwater Books), 320 pages
  • Laurence Coupe (ed) (2000) The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Eco-criticism (Routledge)
  • Garrard,G (2004) Eco-criticism (Routledge)
  • Michael Bunce (1994) The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape (Routledge)
  • Stephanie L Sarver (1999) Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing (Nebraska University Press)