Ecological Literary Criticism

To begin considering how we, as writers, might come to a greater awareness of the environmental underpinnings and ecological considerations of the texts we create, we can begin with Lawrence Buell’s succinct phrase, “the environmental imagination.” In his ground-breaking work, The Environmental Imagination, Buell outlines what he believes to be the four earmarks of an environmental text:

1) The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history;

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; and

4) Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.