Writing the Environment: Ecocritcism and Literature

by Richard Kerridge, Neil Sammells

The contemporary environmental crisis asks fundamental questions about culture. Like other radical critiques, environmentalism cuts across academic boundaries and offers a major challenge to existing cultural and political divisions. This is the first book to draw together the rich variety of environmentalist positions—from ecofeminism to deep ecology—and theorize their contribution to critical theory, literature and popular culture. A distinguished cast of contributors explore the theoretical agenda for ecocriticism, present a green rereading of literary history, and look at contemporary culture: from poetry to children’s books and television.

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1998

About the author

Richard Kerridge is Lecturer in English and Course Director of the MA in Creative Writing at Bath College of Higher Education.

Reviews

[Candy Wood]

This 1998 collection of ecocritical essays aims for a "dialogue" between British and American views, with 5 of the 16 contributors identified as American (7 contributors teach in US universities, though). About half of the essays focus on American texts, and there are occasional references to Australian and South African writers as well as British and Irish ones. All of the essays connect to some extent with the book's subtitle, "Ecocriticism and Literature"--that is, even when they deal with politics, they consider the contribution of texts. They all keep coming back to "nature writing," not including urban settings as part of the environment. More could have paid attention to the first two essays, by SueEllen Campbell and Dominic Head, that suggest the need for a more inclusive definition of "environmentally-oriented work" than the one proposed by Lawrence Buell in 1995. Tracy Brain, showing how works like Silent Spring must have influenced Sylvia Plath's late poetry, does that.