Ecocriticism: The Relationship Between Literature And Environment

The present-day world is prone to myriad atrocities like war, and terrorism. Environmental degradation is yet another burning transgression that remains dormant in the hidden pages of history. Though it is not an age old affair that seeks attention at the very minute, it is equally undeniable that only in the past few decades the need for restoring the harmony between nature and humans are paid heed. Ecocriticism, an emerging field in contemporary literary and cultural theory delineates the relationship between literature and environment in broader perspectives.

Richard Kerridge rightly asserts that, “ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis” (5). It is also an irrefutable fact that the perception of any environmental risk differs from person to person, culture to culture, or from community to community. In this vein, an ecocritical approach towards a literary text offers insights, if not an exact remedy, to revamp the global cataclysms like climate change, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and flood.

Among the environmental disasters, climate change, a global phenomenon, for example, is considered as one of the “wicked problems [which] afflict open, complex and imperfectly understood systems, and are beyond the range of mere technical knowledge and traditional forms of governance” (Hulme). By introducing climate change into fiction, an author dares to get acquainted with