The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology

This book is the first collection of its kind, an anthology of classic and cutting-edge writings in the rapidly emerging field of literary ecology. Exploring the relationship between literature and the physical environment, literary ecology is the study of the ways that writing - from novels and folktales to U.S. government reports and corporate advertisements - both reflects and influences our interactions with the natural world.

Environmental ideas have been shaping politics and writing for many years now, and the literary critics are catching on. This wide-ranging anthology follows Wallace Stegner's notion that an environmentally based criticism should be "large and loose and suggestive and open," and it includes work from many fields, from historian Lynn White's landmark 1962 essay "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" to literary scholar Michael McDowell's recent article "The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight." Fortified by critical notes and reading lists, this collection is useful to students seeking a broad introduction to literary studies of environmental writing.