Hello readers,
Today I am going to discusse ecocriticism. In the simplest possible terms, ‘Eco Criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.’ It was proposed by the pioneer or the father of this theory in the USA, Cheryll Glotfelty. And I hope, even if this EcoCriticism or Green studies as a theory is not so popular, those who are curious in this field must be knowing it already. The study of nature as presented in the pieces of literature is what that has been the playground of the people concerned with this rather new movement in literary theories. As per the term Eco-Criticism, it only came into the major play after the attempts of Cheryll Glotfelty, right since the 1989 WLA (Western Literature Association) conference.
Key Concerns of Ecocriticism
reigning religions and philosophies of Western civilization are deeply anthropocentric
Prominent in ecocriticism is a critique of binaries such as man/nature or culture/nature, viewed as mutually exclusive oppositions.
Many ecocritics recommend, and themselves exemplify, the extension of “green reading” (that is, analysis of the implications of a text for environmental concerns and toward political action) to all literary genres, including prose fiction and poetry, and also to writings in the natural and social sciences.
There is a growing interest in the animistic religions of so-called “primitive” cultures, as well as in Hindu, Buddhist, and other religions and civilizations that lack the Western opposition between humanity and nature, and do not assign to human beings dominion over the nonhuman world.
Example :-
Ecocritics believe that we also have to investigate the concept of nature itself. Societies frequently view their own hierarchies and codes of conduct as natural, rather than as artificial and man-made. Literary texts can help us realize how human beings use nature for their own ends.
A great example of an ecocritical reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is Scott Hess’s article “John Clare, William Wordsworth, and the (Un)Framing of Nature.”
Hess argues that Wordsworth treats the daffodils like a photo on a postcard. Wordsworth doesn’t involve himself in nature. Instead, he looks at nature from afar (like a cloud), and leaves as soon as he has had his fill. In other words, Wordsworth acts like the tourist who comes by once and snaps a quick picture before moving on. In the end, Wordsworth seems more concerned about his own feelings than about nature:
Marxism in Simple Terms :
If you live in America, you know how it works under a capitalist system, meaning there are different socioeconomic classes. You may hear these classes called upper, middle, and lower class. However, you might also hear words like blue-collar worker, working poor, white-collar worker, etc. All these different terms define where someone stands on their society’s socioeconomic ladder. Some classes struggle, while others rule the corporate world.
To analyze and remove this struggle, Marxism came into play. To define Marxism in simple terms, it’s a political and economic theory where a society has no classes. Every person within the society works for a common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone. Sounds simple right? Not so much. Actually, many horror movies and dystopian books are written based on trying to create a classless, utopian society. Now that you know what Marxism is, explore where this theory came from.
According to Marxists, and to other scholars in fact, literature reflects those social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function. Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the quest for wealth traditionally defines characters. So Marxists generally view literature "not as works created in accordance with timeless artistic criteria, but as 'products' of the economic and ideological determinants specific to that era" (Abrams 149).
Marxism is derived from the great philosopher Karl Marx. Marxist criticism, in its diverse forms, grounds its theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820–95), and especially on the following claims:
1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.
2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage.
3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class.
Example :-
Marxist Perspectives in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
This essay focuses on analysing Heart of Darkness from two different critical approaches, mainly a Marxist approach developed through the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as well as a feminist approach and sets out to discover both strengths and limitations for each approach. Marxist critics view “literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate”. This means that Marxist critics look not only at the “sociology of literature , but also take interest in how novels get published, and whether they mention the working class”.Marxist literary criticism looks at literary works from the social institutions in which they originate. Theorists of Marxism believe that ‘even literature stems from a specific ideological function, which is primarily based on the background and ideas of the author’, in this case Joseph Conrad.
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