The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology

The Ecocriticism Reader

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LANDMARKS IN LITERARY ECOLOGY

Edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm

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THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS

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ATHENS AND LONDON

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@ t996 by the University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia lo6oz "Some Principles of Ecocriticism" @ tggS by \Tilliam Howarth "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" @ 1986 by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Preface ix Acknowledgments xi

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96 OL

xv Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis

979899ooc543z, oJ040506P8765

CHERYLL GLOTFELTY

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The ecocriticism reader : landmarks in literary ecology Cheryll Glotfelty, ed., Harold Fromm, ed. P. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

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rssN o-82o3-r78o-z (alk. paper). - lsrN o-82o3-r78r-o (pbk. : alk. paper)

r. Criticism. z. Ecology in literature. 3. Nature in literature. I. Glotfelty, Cheryll. II. Fromm, Harold.

nN8r.Ez4

8or'95-dczo

1996 95-1i-150

pARr oNE Ecotheory: Reflections on Nature and Culture 3

The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis

LYNN WHITE, JR. r5

Nature and Silence CHRISTOPHER MANES

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data available Text illustrations by Susan Nees

30

From Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route HAROLD FROMM 4o

Cultivating the American Garden FREDERICK TURNER

Mrp

Yi I CONTENTS

CONTENTS

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vii

52

170

The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System ALISON BYERLY

Unearthing Herstory: An Introduction ANNETTE KOLODNY

,

69

" Tl'J :; Tf '"': i::'; :.'',"

x8z Speaking a Word for Nature SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

rg6 92 Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy NEIL EVERNDEN

The Postnatural Novel: Toxic Consciousness in Fiction of the rggos

r05

Is Nature Necessary?

Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism WTLLIAM RUECKERT

DANA PHILLIPS

CYNTHIA DEITERING 2o4

pARr rHREE critical Studies of Environmental Literature

124 The Land and Language of Desire: !7here Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet

225

SUEELLEN CAMPBELL

Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism GLEN A. LOVE

47 American Liter ary Environmental ism as Dome stic DAVTD MAZEL

pARr

rwo

O

rientalism

Ecocritical Considerations of Fiction and Drama

24r The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary perspective PAULA GUNN ALLEN 264 Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination LESLIE MARMON SILKO

The Carri., r"gtfheory of Fiction URSULA K. LE GUIN

276

r55

A Taxonomy of Nature'S7riting THOMAS J. LYON

The Comic Mode JOSEPH W. MEEKER

z8z

Indexing American Possibilities: The Natural History rilTriting of Bartram,'Wilson, and Audubon M

I(;llAI..1. l]RANCII

Yiii I CONTENTS

303

Desertsolitaire:Counter-FrictiontotheMachineintheGarden DON SCHEESE

PREFACE

rrl

3L3

to the American Landscape Heroines of Nature: Four \romen Respond VERA L. NORWOOD 35L

Nature Writing and Environmental Psychology: The Interiority of Outdoor Experience SCOTT SLOVIC 37r

The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight

MICHAEL J. MCDOWELL RecommendedReading

393

periodicals and Professional Organizations 4or

Contributors 4oj

Index

4o9

One day late in the r98os an unsolicited packet arrived in the mail that *r, ,rii.ally to alter my professional life as a literary scholar-critic and to have repercussions in my private life as well. The contents consisted of a form i.tt., and bibliography from a Cornell graduate student in English named Cheryll Burgess. She was finishing up a dissertation on three American women writers, but her most intense interest seemed to be the anything-but-apparent connection between literature and the environment. Her pl""s were ambitious, not to say grandiose: to Pursue an interest in .cology while remaining a literary professional, to promulgate the concePtion of "ecocriticism" while producing an anthology of ecocritical essays, and formally to become the first American professor of literature and the environment. The bibliography contained more than two hundred essays and books that bore some relation to the idea of ecocriticism, but even more useful was the potential mailing list it provided of authors who might be of some assistance in producing the ecocritical anthology.'til(riting to most of them, Cheryll Burgess described her aims, included a coPy of the bibliography, and waited for replies-which soon began to Pour in. One result of this large-scale operatircn was that I found myself agreeing to serve as chief as,irlnt, although not without some unease that with most of the hard and creative work already done I would emerge in the role of an unearned beneficiary of someone else's groundbreaking labors. Although I have helped t, make some decisions and discovered a number of essays to include, this preface gives me the opportunity to disclaim maior status. As tlrilgs turned out, much more than Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty's origiIr:rl rtinrs lrrtvc becrt realiz.cd. She has in fact promulgated an awareness lx

PREFACE

of ecocriticism (a term often credited to the essay we have included by 'STilliam H. Rueckert), she has produced her anthology, and (believe it or not) she has indeed become, as far as we know, the first academic whose appointment includes "literature and the environment" in its title. Furthermore, my own ecological consciousness, which was very great to start h^ b..r, raised L.yo.d anything I could have imagined, because the

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IIT

with,

present enterprise changed the direction of my Personal and professional iir., by fusing together what had previously been disparate and unrelated activities in literature and in ecology. Professor Glotfelty's substantial has influence in the ecological/nature-writing wing of American Studies conmany her well-through as people touched a large number of other Fired ference papers, networking activities, and the original bibliography' ecocriticism on by her d.di."tion, I organized andchaired the first session to be offered at the Modern Language Association convention (in r99t), a remarkably well-attended event, at which we discovered the large number ecocritics that we knew nothing about, many of them starved

of practicing for colleagues. In all, i"- h"ppy to own up to my pleasure and my debt in having been a part of this fertile enterprise Harold Fromm

A researcher friend in physics once said that if you want to know how long it will take to complete a project, you must multiply the time you think it will take by rwo and then raise the answer to the next higher order of magnitude. One indication that the so-called gap berween the sciences and the humanities is indeed bridgeable is that the formula that describes experimental physics also obtained in editing this anthology, which has taken not three months but six years to produce. As the years have stretched on, the number of people who have offered help and encouragement has increased exponentially. It is a privilege to thank them here and to acknowledge our indebtedness for their friendship, advice, and support. For early belief in this book and for their steadfast backing, we owe a great deal to Jean Frantz Blackall, IilTilliam Howarth, and Glen Love. A four-year Jacob Javits fellowship allowed Cheryll to begin this book while still in graduate school. For their enthusiasm and generosity we would like to thank each of the contributing authors and, in addition, James Applewhite, Lawrence Buell, Del Ivan Janik, Leo Marx, ames C. McKusick, Patrick D. Murphy,Val Plumwood, Ann Ronald, Peter .f Schwenger, Patricia Clark Smith, Denys Trussell, and Frederick'Waage. For their assistance in compiling the list of recommended reading, "virtual" thanks goes to members of the e-mail network for the Association firr the Study of Literature and Environment, most especially to Stephen Aclams, Karla Armbruster, Jonathan Bate, Ruth Blair, Michael Branch, Lawrence Buell, SueEllen Campbell, Tom Dean, Jim Dwyer, Sara Farris, .f lrarr Hochman, Mary.fenkins, Michael Kowalewski, Glen Love, Ralph l,rrtts, I)an Nolantl, Serrn ()'Orirdy, Daniel Patterson, Steve Phelan, Daniel l)hilipporr, l)i;lnc ()rrrrrtic, lrliz.rrbcth llaymond, Stephanie Sarver, Tom

xii I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Scanlan, Jim Stebbings, Philip Terrie, Paul Tidwell, H. Lewis Ulman, Kathleen'V7allace, Louise'Westling, and David \Tilliams. The members of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment have given us a welcome sense of community, leavening the work with a good deal of fun. Best wishes to Lorraine Anderson, Ralph Black, Paul Bryant, Lawrence Buell, SueEllen Campbell, Carol Cantrell, John Calderazzo, Michael P. and Valerie Cohen, Chris Cokinos, Nancy Cook, Terrell

Dixon, Elizabeth Dodd, Jim Dwyer, john Elder, Greta Gaard, Michael Hood, \Tilliam Howarth, Mark Hoyer, Verne Huser, Zita Ingham, Rochelle Johnson, Glen Love, Tom Lyon, Ian Marshall, Thomas Meyers, David Morris, Michael Munley, Molly Murfee, Patrick Murphy, Alicia Nitecki, Daniel Patterson, Daniel Philippon, Anne Phillips, Michele Potter, Lawie Ricou, David Robertson, Ann Ronald, Susan Rosowski, Suzanne Ross, Kent Ryden, Don Scheese, Mark Schlenz, Matthias Schubnell, Julie Seton, Gary Snyder, Lisa Spaulding, Ron Steffens, Tom Stuckert, Stan Tag,

David Taylor, David Teague, Mikel Vause, Allison'Wallace, and Louise Westling. Special praise and affection go to Mike Branch, Sean O'Grady, and Scott Slovic. At the University of Nevada, Reno, Cheryll would like to thank her colleagues for their friendship and support. Stacy Burton and Mary Webb have been particularly wonderful. Sincere thanks are due to Dean of Arts and Sciences Ann Ronald for bold vision and for making things happen, to Robert Merrill for his editorial acumen and dedication to the English Department he chairs, and to secretaries Linda Gorelangton and Geri McVeigh, who make otrr academic lives not only possible but pleasant. Cheryll would like to acknowledge the students in her Spring r99r graduate seminar, "Ecocriticism: Literary Criticism and Ecological Consciousness," as well as the graduate students she currently advises, all of whom bring her great intellectual treasures. Finally, we send love to our family and friends, who make life a ioy. Loren, Evelyn, and Stan Acton, Eileen Pape, Laura Koeninger, Gretchen Diether, and Elizabeth Doherty-warmest thanks to you all. Gloria Fromm and Steve Glotfehy, you are always in our hearts and in our lives.

r r r Jhs authors and the Press gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following pieces: Paula Gunn Allen, "The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Perspective." Frne in which man's imprint is present but "substantially unnoticeable." It clescribes an image, not a reality. This image of the wilderness is as much of an aesthetic construct as picttrrcsqLre views of the Lake District, and, some would argue, equally elitist. Williern T'trckcr suggests, for example, that there is a class dimension to the irtsistt'ttcc of Ittrttty wilderness enthusiasts on excluding motorized vehicles, wlriclr r('l)r('s('ltr "cliffcrcttt t:rstes in recreati{)n," from wilderness areas. In ;r kirrtl ol rt'vt't'st' t'ltic, rrppcr-rttirldlc-cl:rss crrvironnrcntalists hike,, canoe,

58

. ALISON BYERLY

or ride on horseback, claiming that the motorboats and snowmobiles often preferred by less wealthy visitors profane the "authentic" wilderness experience. Tucker concludes that "wildernesses . . . are essentially parks for the upper middle class" (r8,r7).s But although true wildernesses may be accessible only to a privileged few, national parks can approximate the wilderness experience for a larger audience by presenting a landscape that reproduces a scenic facsimile oI wilderness, a mythologized image of what we would like the wilderness to be. Evidence of human activity is carefully erased, but humans themselves are not excluded. On the contrary, their spectatorial presence is essential to the idea of wilderness. The old question of whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is there to hear it encapsulates the paradox: a tree standing in the forest is not a part of the "wilderness" unless a civilized observer is there to see it. Gary Snyder points out that the word wild is defined in dictionaries "by what-from a human standpoint-it is not" (Snyder 9). The framing of the wilderness area by contrast to the civilization that surrounds it is a process analogous to the picturesque framing of landscape described earlier. \7hile the specific characteristics of the two aesthetics differ, the mechanism of appropriation is the same. The extent to which public land is considered a specifically aesthetic resource is apparent in the rhetoric of its staunchest defenders. An article in Parks and Recreation insists that we must "understand our cultural as

well as economical ties to the land," illustrating its point by listing some of the many writers, artists, and composers whose work was influenced by their love of nature (LaPage and Ranney S). An activist promoting the idea of reintroducing wolves into the park points to their "symbolic" importance to our culture: "How do you say what it means to have lost the wolf in a place like Yellowstone? How do you say what a Mozart symphony is? How do you say what it's like to lose the Mona Lisa?" (Fugate r8). The wolves' value is authenticated by comparison to humankind's greatest artistic achievements. The Sierra Club exploited this conception of nature as akin to art in its famous t966 print ads protesting dams in the Grand Canyon. Congressional proposals introduced in ry63 sought authorization to build dams in the Grand Canyon in order to create a deeper river, destroying the canyon's value as a fossil record but making it easier for casual visitors to view the canyon walls, since they could use large powerboats instead of rafts or canoes. The Sierra Club ran full-page ads in rna jor ncwspapcrs

THE USES OF LANDSCAPE T

59

with the headline: "sHouLD lvE ALSo FLooD THE srsrrNE cHApEL so TouRrsrs cAN GET NEARER THE cEILTNG?" (Sierra Club 3o). The idea that altering nature constitutes a kind of desecration could only be established, it seems, by comparing it to art. In a sense, the Grand Canyon is a piece of "found art" that we have framed as a proper object of aesthetic contemplation, and to destroy "The Grand Canyon" is to destroy something we ourselves have made. It must therefore be protected for the same reasons that we protect all parts of our cultural heritage. The term outdoor musettms, introduce d in ry21 by Robert Sterling Yard

of the National Parks Association, and still widely used to describe the national parks (Brockman r4o), embodies a conception of conservation that treats the national park's contents as art objects to be valued for their appearance and preserved in their existing state. A recent article on politics and ecological reform suggests that "environmentalists could learn a good

deal about park management from those who run museums." A museum "typically needs more space and additional art objects, but it has a limited endowment . . . Trades are commonly made of one kind of painting for another." The author proposes that individual parks be placed under the control of a board of directors who would have "a fiduciary dury to a narrow set of goals, such as the preservation of wilderness," but would be empowered to generate revenue by selectively exploiting "intensive recreation possibilities, scientific research, or even the potential mineral values of park lands" (Stroup r78).Interestingly, one of the most common areas of expertise in the educational backgrounds of park superintendents is landscape architecture-it is second only to law enforcement (Chase, "'What \Washington Doesn't Know" r4ij. Park superintendents are not scientists; they are curators and policemen, protectors of valuable commodities. This sense of nature as a picturesque commodity is reflected in the design and management of the national parks. The access highways that traverse them are filled with Scenic Overlooks, roadside pulloffs that designate ideal picture-taking locations. The virtually identical photographs that many visitors bring back from Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, or Yellowstone are in ir sense replicas of the watercolor scenes that early British tourists brought brrck from Italy or the Lake District. The impr>rtance of maintaining the aesthetic illusion of wilderness is reflcctcd in numerrk: International Universiries Press, 196o). [

e . l:dith Oobb, Thc F,cology of Imagination in Childhood (New York: Columbia )rrivt'rsity l)rt'ss, 1977).

104

7. patlshepard,

.

NEIL EVERNDEN

WILLIAM RUECKERT

"Place in American Culture," North American Reuiew z6z (Fall

1977\ zz'32. 8. L. M. Arthur, T. C. Daniel, and R. J. Boster, "scenic Assessment: An Over-

Literature and Ecology

view," Landscape Planning + (tgZZ)r roz-29of 9. F. Sparshott, "Figuring the Ground: Notes on Some Theoretical Problems r.-23' 63 Education Aesthetic of ft972): Environment," the Aesthetic lournal ro. Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination (Totonto: CBC, ry6r) 9.

llr

i'Th. Paranoid Streak in Man," Beyond Reductionism, ed' lt' P. Maclean, Koestler and J. Smythies (London: Hutchinson,ry6g)' rz. S. Kvalay,"Ecophilosophy & Ecopolitics: Thinking and Acting in Response to the Threats of Ecocatastrophe," North American Reuiew z6o (Summer ry74)t

"lt

17-28.

morrow's world to think beyond today's well being and provide for tomor-

rr.

13. Frye rr.

14. Shepard, "Place in American Culture," 3z' 15. Kvaloy.

15. Shepard, "EcologY and Man," 2. 17. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949) r$.

AN EXPERIMENT IN ECOCRITICISM

1

is the business of those who direct the activities that will shape to-

9y7."-ftaymond Dasmann,

Plonet in Peril

'Any living thing that hopes to live on earth must fit into the ecosphere or perish."-Barry Commoner, Ihe Aosing Grcle ".

. . the function of

poetry . . . is to nourish the spirit of man by giving him

the cosmos to suckle. We have only to lower our standard of dominating nature and to raise our standard of participating in it in order to make the reconciliation take place. When man becomes proud to be not just the site where ideas and feelings are produced, but also the crossroad where they divide and mingle, he will be ready to be saved. Hope therefore lies in a

poetry through which the world so invades the spirit of man that he becomes almost speechless, and later reinvents language."-Francis Ponge, TheVoice of Things

SHIFTING OUR LOCUS OF MOTIVATION \Where have we been in literary criticism in my time? Well, like Count Mippipopolus in The Sun Also Rises, we seem to have been everywhere, seen and done everything. Here are just some of the positions and battles

which many of us have been into and through: formalism, neoformalism, and contextualism; biographical, historical, and textual criticism; rrrythic, archetypal, and psychological criticism; structuralism and pherrorrrcrrology; spatirrl, rk: Norron, r99ol), but is much less often the subject of critical study. lror rrrr analysis that has not forgotten the importance of early natural history writrnll! s('("1'hontas.f . Lyorr, ctl.,This Incomperable l,ande (Boston: Houghton Mifllin, 1.111,1).

298

I MICHAEL BRANCH

3. For a good, recent study of eighteenth-century natural history writing which offers a view very different from my own, see Pamela Regis, Describing Early America (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, r99L).In short, Regis argues that the work of a writer such as \William Bartram should be considered science rather thanbelles lettres (xi).

4. The new perspective on nature was carried to America in the writings of such deists as Shaftesbury and Pope, who were widely read in the colonies. It was Shaftesbury whose passion for wild nature prompted him to reject the "feigned wilderness" of palace gardens, and Pope who, in his "Essay on Man," encouraged readers to "look up through nature to Nature's God" (Hans Huth, Nature and the American [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957) rc). by

5. Burke's sublime enjoyed great currency in America, and was joined shortly \Tilliam Gilpin's concept of the "picturesque." Like the sublime, the idea of the

picturesque was widely disseminated in American culture, and Gilpin's work was

known to nineteenth-century authors including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Poe (Huth rz). \7hile it may be said that the cult of the sublime and picturesque deteriorated rather rapidly into a clich6d response to the landscape, these new aesthetic categories played a vital role in reversing the seventeenth-century aversion to wilderness. Working in concert with deist assumptions about nature, the sublime and picturesque helped establish as divinely inspiring and aesthetically redeeming the fear and trembling generated by the American land. 6. Naturalists of this period turned away from European cultural standards and toward the scientific and literary possibilities of the American land. An excellent example of the American response to the call for a native natural history is provided by the career of Charles I7ilson Peale, whose Philadelphia Museum, established in 1786, had a tremendous influence upon the Americanizatron of the field. 7. The quotations are Dr. James DeKay and Dr. Daniel Drake, respectivel/, and are quoted in Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought, zd ed. (New York: Harper 6c Bros., r95r) z5z-53. 8. The full title of Bartram's book is Trauels Through North (y South Carolina, Georgia, East (v 'West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensiue Territories of tbe Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions,Together'With Obseruations on the Manners of the Indians. An English edition was published the following year (1792) in London.

9. The first praise is from Coleridge's Table Talh; the passage from the letter to Emerson may be found in the "Editor's Note" (S) of Trauels of William BartrAm, edited by Mark Van Doren. For a thorough discussion of Bartram's influence upon the English romantics, see N. Bryllion Fagin, William Bartram (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universiry Press, r%3). ro. 'William's fatherJohn subscribed to a personal brand