Overview

This text grounds environmental literature firmly in the life sciences, particularly evolutionary biology. It attempts to bridge the ever-widening gulf between the ""Two Cultures"". Glen Love - a founder of ecocriticism - argues that literary studies has been diminshed by a general lack of recognition for the vital role that the biological foundation of human life plays in cultural imagination. He presents with clarity and directness a model for how to incorporate Darwinian ideas - the basis for all modern biology and ecology - into ecocritical thinking. Beginning with an overview of the field of literature and environment and its claim to our attention and arguing for a biologically informed theoretical base for literary studies, Love then aims the lens of this critical perspective on the pastoral genre and works by canonical writers such as Willa Cather, Ernet Hemingway and William Dean Howells. This interdisciplinary work should be of interest to the entire ecocritical community, as well as humanists, social scientists and others concerned with the rediscovery of human nature.

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9780813922447

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Practical Ecocriticism fills an important niche unoccupied by any other book. Love is mediating between two rapidly developing fields that have hitherto had only glancing connections: ecological literary criticism and evolutionary psychology. As he so persuasively argues, these fields are contiguous and interdependent. This is an immensely valuable contribution and should long provide a central point of reference and information.

Practical Ecocriticism fills an important niche unoccupied by any other book. Love is mediating between two rapidly developing fields that have hitherto had only glancing connections: ecological literary criticism and evolutionary psychology. As he so persuasively argues, these fields are contiguous and interdependent. This is an immensely valuable contribution and should long provide a central point of reference and information. Love's reputation precedes him: He was the single most influential intellectual spirit behind the takeoff phase of the ecocritical movement. A substantial, original contribution to the field, Practical Ecocriticism will be a widely influential book. --Lawrence Buell, author of Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond Practical Ecocriticism fills an important niche unoccupied by any other book. Love is mediating between two rapidly developing fields that have hitherto had only glancing connections: ecological literary criticism and evolutionary psychology. As he so persuasively argues, these fields are contiguous and interdependent. This is an immensely valuable contribution and should long provide a central point of reference and information. --Joseph Carroll, author of Evolution and Literary Theory Love's reputation precedes him: He was the single most influential intellectual spirit behind the takeoff phase of the ecocritical movement. A substantial, original contribution to the field, Practical Ecocriticism will be a widely influential book.--Lawrence Buell, author of Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond Practical Ecocriticism fills an important niche unoccupied by any other book. Love is mediating between two rapidly developing fields that have hitherto had only glancing connections: ecological literary criticism and evolutionary psychology. As he so persuasively argues, these fields are contiguous and interdependent. This is an immensely valuable contribution and should long provide a central point of reference and information.--Joseph Carroll, author of Evolution and Literary Theory

<p>Practical Ecocriticism fills an important niche unoccupied by any other book. Love is mediating between two rapidly developing fields that have hitherto had only glancing connections: ecological literary criticism and evolutionary psychology. As he so persuasively argues, these fields are contiguous and interdependent. This is an immensely valuable contribution and should long provide a central point of reference and information.--Joseph Carroll, author of Evolution and Literary Theory

Author Information

Glen A. Love is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oregon, where he taught American literature and initiated courses in bioregional and environmental literature over the past three decades. His ecocritical publications include New Americans and numerous periodical essays on literature and the environment. He and his biologist wife, Rhoda Love, published the groundbreaking anthology, Environmental Crisis, at the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

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