ABSTRACT
Karl Kroeber published Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind in response to what he describes as an "esoteric abstractness that afflicts current theorizing about literature". An ecological view of the world, even a proto-ecological one, must be fundamentally materialistic, since its basic premise is that human beings are appropriately situated here on earth. Kroeber's insights apply to a wide range of texts, but it is useful to remember that he focuses on British Romantic poets whom he describes as "forerunners of a new biological, materialistic understanding of humanity's place in the natural cosmos". When Kroeber writes, "an ecological view of the world, even a proto-ecological one, must be fundamentally materialistic, since its basic premise is that human beings are appropriately situated here on earth". Kroeber's core concepts offer scholars a flexible and interdisciplinary approach to make sense of how writers, filmmakers, and artists portray nonhuman nature.
