• Ecocriticism is a subfield of literary field and cultural studies emerged around the 1980s, exploring
the complex and various representations of nature through literatures, poetry and films. It offers an
important historical perspective of how nature has been represented across time.
Cheryll Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical
environment” and poses the below questions:
• What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this novel?
• In addition to race, class, and gender, should place become a new critical category?
• In what ways has literacy itself affected humankind’s relationship to the natural world?
• How has the concept of wilderness changed over time?
• What view of nature informs U.S. Government reports, corporate advertising, and televised nature
documentaries, and to what rhetorical effect?
• What bearing might the science of ecology have on literary studies?
