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The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology

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In my investigations, this is the first collection of ecocritical essays that attempts to lay a foundation and project a future. Ecocriticism is gaining popularity and is being accepted as a serious mode of discourse for literary studies. This book will help people understand the background and fundamentals behind this new tradition in literary criticism

If any reader has interest in ecocriticism, never miss this canonical book! The introduction by Cheryll Glotfelty draws an important map for ecocritical studies. This book has collected almost the most crucial essays by the most important scholars on this (interdisciplinary) field. Besides, this book also introduces top fifteen choices for further recommended reading and other useful references (including books, periodicals, and professional organizations). The contributors are briefly introduced as well. With the help of Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, I believe you will learn much more as myself.

This book is a wonderful resource to undergraduate and graduate students alike, as well as professors and teachers. It fuses critical thinking on the environment and methods of literary study. The theoretical chapters, especially those by Lynn White Jr. and William Rueckert reflect their authors' high-minded interests and do not provide tangible evidence (i.e. texts) for readers to understand the magnitude of what is being said. For instance, Rueckert's "Literature and Ecology," spends quite a few pages expounding on the idea of text as energy derived from the environment, but waits until the last two pages of his essay to skim over his exact thoughts on specific texts. Certainly more the stuff of graduate students. On the other hand, the volume includes pieces like Paula Gunn Allen's "Sacred Hoop" which is a seminal work, of which Americanists are still reeling from its effects. If you're not interested in Native American Studies, avoid buying Allen's book of the same title and read her essay included in "The Ecocriticism Reader." Her's and many others' essays would make great interjections into a first-year syllabus (a writing seminar on the environment perhaps...) or an American Lit. class.

Some of the later essays --McDowell and Slovic, for example --will require some background in literary theory, but not much. The book maintains its importance as ecocritical studies continues to be a relevant and emerging field. Necessary for anyone thinking about advanced degrees in English, history, or environmental studies.

The one aspect that left me unfulfilled was the introductory essay by Cheryll Glotfelty. She implores her readers to take action --and I hope many of us will --but many of the essays do not reflect that kind of ambitious spirit. That is not to say that the essays are diminished in importance, only that their writers perhaps do not share the same goals as Glotfelty of synthesizing reading environmental literature and actually cultivating a garden, or recycling, or another environment-mindful activity.

This is an absolutely essential collection; more than that, it is filled with incredible and illuminating thinking and writing. A must-have.

This is the sort of book that makes every environmental scholar green with envy that they didn't pen it themselves. This book, together with only a few others, provides a powerful introduction to the growing field of ecocriticism. I have refered my students to this work and indeed found it to be very useful as a background reader and guide when penning my own recent book of ecocriticsm concerning contemporary nature writing about water - Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water.