ABSTRACT
A relative newcomer to the North American academy, ecocriticism is an area of interdisciplinary study that has begun to make its mark, ushering in environmental literature courses in dozens of departments across the continent. As this collection indicates it is, likewise, making a similar impact elsewhere, notably in the UK and Japan. What ecocriticism is, exactly, depends on whom one asks, but as Cheryll Glotfelty writes in her introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader, its common property can be defined as 'the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment'. Many of the questions ecocritics ask have been asked by literary critics for years: What role does setting play in the plot of a novel? What metaphors are used to describe the natural environment? What is the representation of the relationship between 'man' and 'nature'? But other questions are not so obvious nor are they easily answered: 'How do we characterize nature writing as a genre? In addition to race, class, and gender, should place become a new critical category? Do men write about nature differently than women do?' These are some other examples that Glotfelty offers.
