Eco-Criticism Lecture

Background

Lawrence Buell

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
the human interest is not understood as the only legitimate interest
Human accountability to the environment is part of the text's ethical orientation
Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text (7-8)(Parallels Indigenous Knowledges)

A move away from Aristotle's fourfold framework for looking at literature
- Aristotle: 1. plot 2. characterization 3. theme 4. setting
Buell says that the environment needs to take a higher importance

<aside> 🌲 It's more than giving a non-human object a human voice. It is where it is beyond the human perspective

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Kate Soper

says we always need to consider 'what is nature'
'nature has been used for political and power gains
the connections bet ween language, literature and the environment very important
"transmit values with profound ecological implications"**3 ways of looking at nature (Kate Soper)**1 - metaphysical concept humans use nature to 'think they're difference' what does it mean to be human?humans: binary oppositions everything not human is nonhuman2 - Realist Concept the structures and processes of nature the causes and effects of these processes cycles, seasons, the laws of nature how humans fit into these laws3 - Nature as lay or surface concept the observable features of nature the experiences of nature But Soper suggests all 3 of these approaches place humans at the centre
even in animal rights. The rights come from humans, based upon human laws, etc.
Ranking Landscape
Animals

<aside> 🌲 Western writers have often neglected place. They may give brief descriptive passages but only as a way to get into the 'real' story about the characters

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Conventional descriptions of place fall into three categories: preparing the location for the following scenes, dramatic intensification, and symbolic doubling, and these are seen as writing about place. (Modern Criticism and Thoery, 2008, pg668)
- humans are without a natural habitat, therefore it is often the background
- Setting is always used here for character development. This needs to change.
- It's all about people Imagination and Consciousness and Human Centred
- Can a person have green consciousness?
  - can human imagine other consciousness than the human?
  - Can the non-human imagine?
- Language: is the language an environmental problem?
  - Nature poet Gary Snyder says that language is 'wild' and cannot be tamed by human order
- language is not the exclusive property of humans

Pine Tree Tops by Gary Snyder

In the blue night frost haze, the sky glows with the moon. Pine tree tops bend snow-blue, fade into sky, frost, starlight. The creak of boots. Rabbit tracks, deer tracks, what do we know.

<aside> 🌲 Cary Wolfe: Human language is only one of the vast network of signifying possibilities across species

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As non-humans animals, plants, and rivers once spoke to our tribal ancestors, but now the words on the page speak to us
- other things are there which we have not let learnt to speak
language is a tool which humans manipulate and control the world around them
- language always creates a human centered reality
Eco-Semiotics