Environmental Literary Studies Research Articles

Environmental literary studies and their didactics: for a School of Life

Crises call for rethinking and metamorphosis; the sense of loss of meaning, ecological challenges and, more specifically in the case of our study, the crisis in teaching careers and the decline in literary studies enrolments call for meta-reflection, an analysis of what is being done here and elsewhere, and of what has been done before, in order to implement transformative, efficient action that makes sense and creates links. We propose to take a conceptual look at a flourishing field of research - environmental literary studies - and another emerging one - its didactics - by placing our reflections in a historical perspective: while the 19th century is known for being the century of knowledge sharing, it also saw the emergence of voices advocating interdisciplinary educational approaches, practices bringing together life sciences and literature, book-based knowledge and the 'outdoor classroom'. These are perspectives and experiences that are particularly relevant today.

"Animality runs right through the human being". Interview with Anne Simon

Zoopoetics studies the diversity of stylistic, linguistic and narrative means used to convey the diversity of animal emotions and behaviour, as well as the diversity of their worlds. How does this field of research fit in with environmental literary studies? How does zoopoetics help to renew the ways in which literature is studied, from school to university? Director of research at the CNRS, Anne Simon is a French researcher in literary and philosophical studies. A specialist in Proust, she has focused her work on the living and animality in literature, developing the field of zoopoetics research. Her publications include Une bête entre les lignes. Essai de zoopoétique (Marseille, Wildproject, 2021). She is in charge of the 'Animots' research programme, funded by the ANR between 2010 and 2014 and now supported by the République des savoirs unit (CNRS/ENS/Collège de France - PSL).

Introduction

AbstractThis introduction charts the editors’ evolving understanding of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for literary studies in the real time of the crisis. Oriented around the themes of friendship and community, the introduction articulates the overall ambition of the issue as one of maintaining an engaged intellectual community during the isolation imposed by the pandemic. Foregrounding narrative as the issue’s major emphasis, it describes how the issue engages with pandemic storytelling in relation to literary history and literary production, environmental literary studies, and higher education and the profession. Finally, it provides an overview of the issue’s sections and essays.

Rethinking Ecological Subalterns in Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist

This study explores the concept of subaltern and how its meaning has evolved over the years within the broader scope of postcolonial theory. The study shall trace the concept of subaltern from its anthropocentric meaning in Antonio Gramsci’s writings to Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak’s ideological perspectives. We shall also trace its inroad into the ecocritical study in the works of Michael Egan and Sergio Ruiz Cayuela while maintaining its anthropocentric leaning. The study shall further attempt a redefinition of the subaltern concept to accommodate non-humans in the class of the subordinated social group. Bearing in mind the anthropocentric leaning of the concept of the subaltern, which excludes non-human members of the ecology, we shall redefine the term from its previous usage in environmental literary studies and expand it to include non-humans as a subordinated group. The study shall analyse the relationship between humans and non-humans to determine if non-humans are treated as subordinates or worse than subordinated humans. The study shall draw instances from Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist (2006) to justify the classification of non-humans as the ultimate ecological subalterns of the Niger Delta Environment. We shall consider human relationships with non-humans (land, air, water, animals, vegetation, sea lives) to determine their status as subalterns. The crux of the study is basically to expand the scope of the subaltern theory by analysing the environmental despoliation prevalent in the oil-rich Niger Delta environments of Nigeria.

Mendes, Victor K., and Patrícia Vieira, editors. Portuguese Literature and the Environment. Lexington, 2019

Portuguese Literature and the Environment, edited by Victor K. Mendes and Patrícia Vieira, is a groundbreaking collection that contributes significantly to our understanding of Portuguese environmental literary studies.

The "Critical" Work of Edited Collections: Re-viewing the Texts of Willa Cather and Edith Wharton

The Critical Work of Edited Collections: Re-viewing the Texts of Willa Cather and Edith Wharton Rosowski, Susan J., ed. 2003. Willa Gather's Ecological Imagination. Gather Studies.Vol. 5. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. $35.00 sc. xiv + 327 pp.Singley, Carol J., ed. 2003. Edith Wharton's 'The House of A Casebook. Casebooks in Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. $24.95 sc. 352 pp.In literary studies, edited collections of essays, which typically focus on a given author and/or her work, offer the decided advantage of pulling together knowledgeable critics to explore a specific topic, thereby bringing together new material from multiple viewpoints. A subset of edited collections is the genre of casebook studies, which has become increasingly popular within academe for student scholars. These case studies collect critical essays that have been previously published a way to familiarize the reader with critical viewpoints on a given text and/or author. By reading a casebook study, anyone unfamiliar with the critical work can usually get a general idea of the critical issues considered important. Edited collections, thus, serve both the informed and uninformed audience well, in their ability to create new knowledge from a variety of authorial perspectives. The books under review demonstrate the weaknesses and strengths of such texts.In Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination, the editor, Susan J. Rosowski focuses on the connection between Cather's literary works and the emerging field of ecological literary studies, thus serving Cather scholars by charting new terrain. Carol J. Singley's The House of Mirth: A Casebook brings together some of the most important articles written over the past two decades The House of Mirth and would be of interest to both the Wharton scholar and the student scholar. For the Wharton scholar, the book works a handy reference source on the range of criticism on Wharton. Moreover, this collection would work well in an upper-level classroom to English majors to the current criticism The House of Mirth. With specific audiences in mind, each collection does the critical work of creating knowledge its specific subject. However, they have done so with different agendas.Rosowski begins her introduction in the spirit of seeking and creating new knowledge when she states the book's intended goal: to introduce us to the greening of literary studies, a.k.a. ecological literary studies, ecocriticism, environmental literary studies(2003, ix). In her use of these terms, Rosowski makes it quite clear that Cather's relationship to this field emerges from her involvement with places that shaped her and that she wrote about (ix). This limits the discussion of ecocriticism to one based on the primacy of place. At the same time, Rosowski criticizes other critical perspectives like poststructuralism which she sees performing games of complicating, transgressing, interrogating, and contesting (xiii). By pitting poststructuralism against ecocriticism, Rosowski unnecessarily limits the scope of theoretical terrain, thereby foregrounding the book's central weakness.In the lead article of the collection, Nature and Human Nature: Interdisciplinary Convergences on Cather's Blue Mesa, Glen A. Love articulates some of the grievances against poststructuralist theory that Rosowski points to in her introduction. Like Rosowski, Love argues for the primacy of place as a field of study (2003, 4). He contends that the focus on place can lead scholars in their investigation toward greater interdisciplinarity, combining literary and humanistic interests with the braided scientific concepts of evolution and ecology (4). In suggesting other avenues of critical inquiry, Love points specifically to literary critics, who he thinks need to enlarge their critical purview by including the sciences in their work. But Love's definition of interdisciplinarity discounts what poststructuralist theory can bring to the theory of ecocriticism. …