Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment across many areas of cultural production, including Romantic poetry, wildlife documentaries, climate models, the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, and novels by Margaret Atwood, Kim Scott, Barbara Kingsolver and Octavia Butler.
Greg Garrard’s animated and accessible volume responds to the diversity of the field today and explores its key concepts, including:
- pollution
- pastoral
- wilderness
- apocalypse
- animals
- Indigeneity
- the Earth.
Thoroughly revised to reflect the breadth and diversity of twenty-first-century environmental writing and criticism, this edition addresses climate change and justice throughout, and features a new chapter on Indigeneity. It also presents a glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading.
Concise, clear and authoritative, Ecocriticism offers the ideal introduction to this crucial subject for students of literary and cultural studies.
Table of Contents:
Preface to the Third Edition
- Beginnings: Pollution
- Positions
-
Cornucopia
Ecological Modernisation
Ecofeminism
Political Ecology and Environmental Justice
Radical Ecology
New Materialism
- Pastoral
-
Old World Pastoral
Colonial and Black Pastoral in America
Contemporary British Environmental Literature
Pastoral Ecology
- Wilderness
-
Old World Wilderness
The Sublime
Wilderness in North America
The Trouble with Wilderness
The New Wild?
- Apocalypse
-
Myths of Annihilation and Redemption
The Secular Apocalypse
Environmental Apocalypse
Climate Apocalypse
- Animals
-
Why Animals Matter
Looking at Animals: A Typology
Why Look at Wild Animals?
- Indigeneity
-
Acknowledgements
The ‘Ecological Indian’ and Ecological Indigeneity
North American Indigenous Literatures
Decolonisation, Indigenisation and Ecocriticism
- The Earth
-
Images
Data
Narratives
- Conclusion: Ecocriticism in the Future
Index
About the Author :
Greg Garrard is Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, UBC Okanagan. He is the author of numerous essays on animal studies and environmental criticism, and co-author of Climate Change Skepticism: A Transnational Ecocritical Analysis (2019).
Review :
"In this fully revised 3rd edition, Garrard offers us once again a masterful overview of the field of eco-criticism, useful for both novice and teacher alike. Garrard’s distinctiveness lies in his extraordinarily wide field of view; and his skilful use of multi-partiality … ‘judging texts by what they say rather than by what they leave out’. This edition of Ecocriticism will instantly find a place on my student reading lists, for undergraduate geographers and Masters’ students of the Anthropocene alike. I could wish them no better guide than Garrard for navigating the tropes, ideologies and ideals that infuse environmental writings". - Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography, University of Cambridge
"In the third edition of his seminal Ecocriticism, Greg Garrard continues his candid and ‘multi-partial’ assessments of environmentally oriented texts and ecocritical arguments, ready to discern and judge, unafraid to invite controversy. Thoroughly updated with a new chapter on Indigeneity and an outlook on ecocriticism in the future, this most recent edition of Garrard’s influential introduction to the field is a valuable read for anyone with an interest in ecologically informed literary and cultural studies."- Alexa Weik von Mossner, author of Affective Ecologies
"Ecocriticism provides an accessible and authoritative introduction to ecocritical scholarship. In this third edition, Garrard offers a multi-partial reading approach—judging texts for what they say rather than what they leave out. Chapters highlight this approach while exploring the field’s foundational and continued tensions in weaving together aesthetic, ethical and political considerations.
Consider the new Indigeneity chapter. Spotlighting historical contexts that shape contested meanings of "ecological Indigeneity," Garrard tackles works of literary authors familiar to the ecocritical canon (e.g., Leslie Marlo Silko, Louis Erdrich). He also brings new creative and analytic texts into view to argue first, for attending to the nuance and dynamism of Indigenous ecological relations, and second, for ecocritics to attend to what texts do, well or badly, and not just to what they omit.
Revised with new content, Ecocriticism remains essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies." - Salma Monani, Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies Department, Gettysburg College
"This is an outstanding book, lucid, authoritative and always level-headed, however fraught the material at issue. The clarity of the overview provided will make it useful to experienced writers and teachers in the field as well as to new readers and students. These will also find helpful examples of ecocritical practice and up to date guides to further reading. Sensitive attention to the dynamics of pedagogy and popularization has always been a distinctive feature of Garrard’s work. Admirers of the first or second editions of Garrard’s book should be reminded that this is overwhelmingly (c. 85%) a new book." - Timothy Clark, Professor of English, Durham University
"Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism has long been a foundational text in this vibrant and rapidly evolving field. A changing world requires changing academic responses, which in turn call for fresh editions of central texts. The third edition of Ecocriticism continues to illuminate such essential concepts as pastoralism and wilderness, while also propelling readers toward current issues and approaches such as New Materialism, the climate crisis, affect theory, decolonization, among many others. This new edition will be useful for both longtime ecocritics and newcomers to the field." - Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, coeditor of Nature and Literary Studies
"Ecocriticism has many voices, many forms, many waves, and many sensibilities. But Greg Garrard’s voice, and the shape he has given to teaching and framing this discipline is unique: and for cohorts of students and scholars, his representation of ecocriticism is an entry point into this world. Whether one shares his ideas or not, it is impossible not to be enthralled by his argumentations and participate in the conversation that this book wants to be. As it first appeared, Garrard’s Ecocriticism was a pioneering work. After almost two decades, it is a classic. And, in the Darwinian environment of our book forest, a living one." - Serenella Iovino, Professor of Environmental Humanities, Comparative Literature, and Italian Studies, University of North Carolina
"The third edition of Greg Garrard's Ecocriticism is the most measured, readable, comprehensive introduction imaginable to the broad field of the environmental humanities in general and its literary dimensions in particular." - Sir Jonathan Bate, author of Romantic Ecology and The Song of the Earth
