1. Basics (apply to Into the Wild)
Ecocriticism
Basics (apply to Into the Wild)

2. Ecocriticism
The study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.

3. Ecocriticism
As it now exists in the US, takes its literary foundations from three American writers whose work celebrates nature, the life force, and the wilderness
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau

4. Ecocriticism vs. “green studies”
US calls lens “ecocriticism” and focuses on the celebration of nature
UK calls lens “green studies” and focuses on the threats or dangers of nature

5. Ecocritics
Reject the belief that everything is socially or linguistically constructed. They reject the entire belief of “constuctedness.”
Nature really exists beyond ourselves but is with us and affects us (perhaps fatally if we mistreat it)

6. Shades of Nature
Area one: the wilderness (deserts, oceans, uninhabited continents)
Area two: the scenic sublime (forests, lakes, mountains, cliffs, waterfalls)
Area three: the countryside (hills, fields, woods)
Area four: the domestic picturesque (parks, gardens, lanes)

7. Shades of Nature (cont.)
The different areas are basically a continuum from “pure” nature to nature that has become part of culture (is affected by culture) to predominantly culture.

8. Critical Center We switch our critical attention from inner to outer
What had seemed as mere “setting” is taken from a minor point in discussing literature to the center of the discussion.
Nature is not a metaphor or other literary device (it just is)

9. Re-read literature Look at the natural world differently
Apply growth and energy, sustainability and unsustainability, balance and imbalance, symbiosis and mutuality, and uses of energy and resources to view of nature in literature

10. Pathetic fallacy
Our instinctive tendency to see our emotions reflected in our environment
Example: “cruel sea” projects the human attribute of cruelty onto a natural element

11. Work Cited
All info borrowed or directly quoted from Peter Barry’s book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory