Eco-Critical Analysis

• Eco-Critical Analysis

  Like feminism and Marxism, eco-criticism examines power relations but it does so from the perspective of our natural environment and the impact humanity is having on it.
• Eco-criticism

  • Eco-criticism is a relatively new way of examining texts, emerging from the Green movement which began to organise politically in the 1980s.
  • Like feminism and Marxism, eco-criticism examines power relations but it does so from the perspective of our natural environment and the impact humanity is having on it.
• 1. Connection

  • The following ideas are central tenets of eco-critical thinking:

  1. “Everything is connected to everything else” and eco-criticism should explore how nature and humanity are interconnected.
• 1. Contrast
  2. Early forms of nature writing (e.g. the pastoral tradition of the 16th and 17th centuries) would contrast rural and urban life, associating the countryside with innocence and the town or city with corruption.
• 1. Realities of the countryside
  2. More modern criticism (the post-pastoral tradition) considers earlier ideas of the pastoral as being “false” or “escapist” in that they hide or cover over the realities of the countryside.

  • E.g. the unequal power relations between landowner and labourer
• 1. Exploitation
  2. The exploitation of the planet is connected to the traditional exploitation of women and minorities – eco-feminism.
• Eco-critical considerations

  • As a result, eco-critical approaches to literature may include:
  • Exploring how nature (or the wild, or the city) is represented in a text.
  • Examining how a writer creates and uses settings.
  • Analysing the imagery used to describe nature.
  • Considering if men and women write about nature differently.