Nature and environmental writing are crucial fields that explore humanity's intricate relationship with the natural world, encompassing both its beauty and the challenges it faces. This comprehensive guide, "Nature and Environmental Writing: Key Concepts", delves into the historical origins, core themes, and critical approaches to this vital literary genre. It's a journey from the awe of Romanticism to the urgent concerns of the Anthropocene, offering students a robust understanding of how literature engages with our planet.
What is Nature and Environmental Writing?
Nature writing and environmental writing, while often overlapping, possess distinct characteristics that define their scope and purpose. Both forms draw attention to the non-human world and our interactions with it.
Nature Writing: Blending Science and Lyrical Expression
Nature writing considers other species or non-human places and our relationship with them. Unlike a field guide that presents bare facts, nature writing typically features a lyrical or poetic quality, merging romance with scientific understanding. It often incorporates personal observations and philosophical reflections, frequently written in the first person.
Great nature writing is attentive, highlighting minute details to tell a larger story about humanity's relationship with nature and its fleeting presence on Earth. It often carries an ethical and political dimension, reflecting value-oriented perspectives.
Environmental Writing: Chronicling the Global Crisis
Environmental writing focuses on chronicling the global environmental crisis, particularly within the Anthropocene epoch. This genre makes visible the "slow violence" of environmental change, which is accelerated by expanding human populations and economic growth. Key issues addressed include deforestation, soil loss, species extinction, bioaccumulation, ocean acidification, toxic emissions, and climate change.
Romanticism and Nature: A Historical Foundation
Romanticism, a monumental artistic and intellectual movement, dramatically shifted Western consciousness. Originating in late 18th-century Europe, it challenged the Age of Enlightenment's focus on science and reason, instead championing individual imagination and subjective experience.
Challenging Enlightenment Ideas
Romanticism emerged as a powerful counter-narrative to the scientific and rational objectivity prevalent during the Age of Enlightenment. It highlighted the emotional and imaginative capacities of the human mind, seeing them as central to understanding the world.
Nature as a Predominant Theme
Nature became a central Romantic theme, particularly in response to the Industrial Revolution. This era not only threatened natural preservation but also spurred a rise in countryside tourism as people sought escape from expanding urban areas. Poets, as Carl Thompson observes, demonstrated their appreciation for "landscape, and especially of wild or what was often termed 'romantic' scenery" in their work.
The Sublime and Nature's Power
Natural forces and iconic landmarks were often associated with the "sublime." This aesthetic theory, defined by Edmund Burke, describes "whatever is in any sort terrible [...] is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling": fear and awe. These powerful emotions were believed to inspire imagination to the greatest degree. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously referred to nature as the “language of God.”
The Idyll, Nostalgia, and Loss in Nature Literature
Nature writing often serves as a meeting point for science and literature, observation and imagination. A foundational literary template for representing nature is the pastoral.
The Pastoral Tradition: From Ancient Greece to Modern Nature Writing
The pastoral, originally a genre of poetry, described the lives of shepherds in rural settings. Ancient Greek and Latin poetry introduced the first literary "natural" space, known as the "idyll." The pastoral tradition has been immensely influential, becoming a prototype for nature literature and contributing significantly to the literary representation of the natural world.
Nostalgia and the Loss of Nature
From its very beginnings, nature literature has been inscribed with a sense of nostalgia for the countryside or a lost way of life. It frequently engages with the theme of the loss of nature, often seeking its "imaginative recovery" through literary expression. This longing for a pristine or simpler natural world is a recurring motif.
Patrick Barkham on the Modern Appeal of Nature Writing
Contemporary author Patrick Barkham observes the current state of humanity's relationship with nature. Despite living in increasingly developed, nature-depleted areas, other species continue to thrive around us, supporting our lives by helping us breathe, providing food, and facilitating pollination. Barkham notes that simply pausing to observe with our senses can offer a sense of companionship and wonder from these living things.
Nature writing is flourishing more than ever. In a technologically advanced world where most people live in cities, we are increasingly alienated from the non-human world, leading to a craving for connection. Time spent in nature provides solace, succour, and benefits for mental and physical health. Many also seek to bond with nature vicariously through culture, reading about the wild world. The best writing nourishes us by soothing, entertaining, inspiring, or even angering us, encouraging greater engagement with non-human life as admirers or custodians.
The Anthropocene Epoch: A New Era Defined by Human Impact
Officially, Earth's current geological epoch is the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age. However, the term "Anthropocene Epoch" has gained popularity as an unofficial unit of geologic time.
Defining the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene describes the most recent period in Earth's history where human activity began to have a significant and lasting impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems. The term is derived from the Greek words anthropo (for "man") and *cene" (for "new"), coined and popularized by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.
When Did the Anthropocene Begin?
There are several theories regarding the start date of the Anthropocene:
- Industrial Revolution (1800s): A popular theory suggests it began with the Industrial Revolution, when human activity significantly impacted carbon and methane levels in Earth’s atmosphere.
- Atomic Age (1945): Others propose 1945, coinciding with the testing of the first atomic bomb and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in globally detectable radioactive particles in soil samples.
- Great Acceleration (1950): In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group agreed that the Anthropocene is distinct from the Holocene and began in 1950. This year marked the "Great Acceleration," a dramatic increase in human activity profoundly affecting the planet.
"The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier: Nature Strikes Back
Daphne du Maurier’s short story "The Birds" is a chilling example of early to mid-twentieth-century fiction that imagines concerted attacks on humans by ordinarily harmless birds. This narrative can be contextualized as a post-World War II dystopia where air attacks devastate civilization across the British Isles, if not globally.
Birds as Agents of Catastrophe
In "The Birds," birds become both the agents and symbols of apocalyptic disaster. It portrays a cataclysmic reversal where Earth's supposed top predators become prey, a terrifying perversion of normalcy. This narrative taps into a primal anxiety about animals equipped with natural weaponry like sharp beaks and claws, against which individual humans have little defense. It also reflects a modern anxiety about destruction rained from the sky by powerful human-made weaponry.
Critique of Human Arrogance
"The Birds" represents a chilling instance of the "nature-strikes-back" plot, where humans do not emerge victorious. By imagining a mysterious natural phenomenon that defies understanding or control, the story critiques human arrogance. It ought to foster humility about our purported technological dominance, a humility consistent with environmental respect. The story rejects the "myth of human-nonhuman kinship," presenting nature not as a benevolent ally but as a formidable, incomprehensible force.
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Ecocriticism: A Lens for Environmental Literature
Ecocriticism is a field of literary criticism that examines the interrelationship between humans and the non-human world. It provides a framework for understanding and analyzing literary texts through an ecological lens.
Defining Ecocriticism
Patrick D. Murphy describes ecocriticism as literary criticism arising from and oriented toward a concern with human and nonhuman interaction and interrelationship. Scott Slovic defines it as the study of nature writing through any scholarly approach, or conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and human-nature relationships in any literary text. Ecocritics not only interpret the meaning of nature writing but also use these texts as a context for analyzing society’s ideology and practices concerning nature. Often, this leads to a critique of how our culture devalues and degrades the natural world.
Frequently Asked Questions about Nature and Environmental Writing
What is the difference between nature writing and environmental writing?
Nature writing often focuses on personal observations, lyrical descriptions, and philosophical reflections on the natural world, blending science with poetic expression. Environmental writing typically addresses the global environmental crisis, human impact (like in the Anthropocene), and advocating for ecological awareness and action. While distinct, they often overlap in their concern for the non-human world.
How did Romanticism influence nature writing?
Romanticism, a late 18th-century movement, profoundly influenced nature writing by emphasizing individual imagination, subjective experience, and the power of nature. It presented nature as a source of awe, inspiration, and even the "sublime," directly challenging the era's industrialization and promoting a deep appreciation for wild landscapes.
What is the Anthropocene and why is it important for environmental writing?
The Anthropocene is an unofficial geological epoch defined by significant human impact on Earth's climate and ecosystems, with possible start dates ranging from the Industrial Revolution to the mid-20th century's "Great Acceleration." It's crucial for environmental writing because it provides the historical and scientific context for chronicling the global environmental crisis, human-induced changes, and the urgent need for ecological awareness.
What is the significance of the pastoral in nature literature?
The pastoral, an ancient genre originally depicting rural shepherd life, is a foundational template for nature literature. It introduced the concept of the "idyll" as a literary natural space and influenced how nature is represented as a place of refuge, simplicity, or often, as a subject of nostalgia and a symbol of what has been lost.
How does ecocriticism help us understand nature and environmental writing?
Ecocriticism is a literary approach that studies the relationship between humans and the natural world in texts. It helps us interpret the ecological implications within nature and environmental writing, analyze societal ideologies towards nature, and critique how our culture often devalues or degrades the environment. It offers a critical lens to understand the deeper meanings and societal contexts of these literary genres.