Literature, Environment, Crisis

The Humanities have always been interested in Nature and the non-human or ‘other’, and this has gathered momentum with our increasing awareness of the planet’s vulnerability and our responsibility for averting environmental disaster. The term ‘ecocriticism’ was applied in the mid-1990s to the study of literature and the environment; since then, ecological approaches to critique have rapidly expanded into other areas, encompassing ‘dark ecology’, ‘ecological materialism’, bioregionalism, ecofeminist and queer ecological perspectives. This subject begins with some classical and early modern conceptions of the natural world; it goes on to cover Romantic and Victorian conceptions of Nature, evolution, science and species, and concludes with texts focused on ‘wilderness’, human-animal relations, Indigeneity, extinction, apocalypse and the posthuman.