https://youtu.be/DV4RYlI6sTg
Cherryl Glotfelty (born in 1958) is
the professor of Of literature and the environment at the University of Nevada
Reno. She is the co editor of ‘The Bioregional Imagination: Literature,
Ecology, and Place’. It was William Rueckert who used the term Eco-centrism in
1978 as a movement owes much to Rachel's silent spring. It was Cheryl Glotfelty
who came out with Eco criticism Reader along with its three phases. She also
defined eco criticism as the study of the relationship between literature and
the physical environment. In her Eco criticism reader, she talks about ‘literary
studies in an age of environment crisis’.
Though race, class and gender were
the inevitable topics of the 20th century literature, there where newspaper
reports about oil spills, lead and asbestos poisoning, toxic waste
contamination, extinction of species, growing hole in the ozone layer,
predictions of global warming, acid rain nuclear reactor disaster in Chernobyl,
droughts, floods and hurricanes. But, the other disciplines like history,
sociology, philosophy, law and religion talk about the environment since 1970.
Unfortunately, literary studies and literary criticism were not aware of the
environmental crisis or they have remained indifferent to the environmental
concerns. However, there were individual and cultural scholars and they had
shared their ecological theories and criticism isolated since the seventies. As they didn't organize into a group, eco criticism
didn't have its presence in the modern language association (MLA).
In 1985 teaching environmental
literature Materials Methods, Resources that included the outputs of 19
different scholars made the American universities include literature courses in
their environment studies curricula and some of the English departments begin
to offer minor courses in environmental literature. In 1992 a new association
for the study of Literature and Environmental (ASLE) was formed with the
intention of promoting the ideas and information to strengthen the relationship
between human beings and the natural world. Glotfelty is also of the opinion
that Elaine Showalter's model of the three development stages of feminist
criticism provides a useful scheme for describing three analogous phases in eco-criticism.
In the first stage how nature is represented in literature is discussed. In the
second stage the neglected genre of nature writing is discussed and in the
third stage the dualism that prevalent in western thought and its diving
humanity from nature is discussed. Thus, she proves the strong link between eco
feminism and eco criticism.
Eco criticism has brought an
eco-centered (earth-centered) approach to literary studies instead of
anthropocentrism. It began to ask questions like, Are the values expressed in a
work consistent with ecological wisdom? Do men write about Nature differently
than women? As everything is connected to everything else in this earth,
literature can't float above the material world anymore. As we have reached the
age of environmental limits, as our wants and needs have out stripped the
ability of the earth to provide, either we have to change our ways or we have
to face the global catastrophe.
According to Glotfelty, an
ecologically focused criticism will help us to solve the environmental
problems. It will redraw the boundaries
of literary studies; bring about important changes in the curriculum and
university policies. Aldo Leopold’s ‘A
Sand County Almanac’ and Edward Abbey’s ‘Desert Solitaire’ should be prescribed
for students. All students should have
at least one inter-disciplinary course in environmental studies. Then only they may feel, think and sometimes
say what Loren Acton, her father, said on his viewing the earth from the space
shuttle in 1985,
“……Below was a welcoming
planer…….that’s where life is; that’s where all the good stuff is”.
-------Thulasidharan V
