Glen A Love, "Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism" (Summary)

Arnold Toynbee, an English historian, argued that the present biosphere is the only habitable space and that mankind has the power to make it uninhabitable if the global population does not take prompt and vigorous concerted action to check pollution and toxic pollution caused by short-sighted industrial greed. In the intervening decade, little has been done to address these ecological issues, leading to an uninhabitable earth. The catalogue of actual and potential horrors is familiar to us, including threats of nuclear holocaust, radiation poisoning, germ warfare, the alarming growth of the world's popular population, global warming, destruction of the planet's protected areas, overcutting of the world's last remaining great forests, critical loss of topsoil and groundwater, overfishing and toxic poisoning of oceans, inundation in our own garbage, and an increasing rate of extinction of plant and animal species.

However, instead of confronting these ecological issues, we prefer to think on other things, such as mass culture and literary research. In the face of profound threats to our biological survival, we continue to celebrate the self-aggrandizing ego and place self-interest above public interest, even in matters of common survival. The English profession has failed to significantly address the issue of environmental degradation, which is a critical concern for our survival. The problem-solving strategies of the past have been increasingly ineffective, and we have grown accustomed to living with crises and outliving them.

Contemporary "deep" ecologists argue that we must break through our preoccupation with mediating only human issues and focus on the ecological systems that must absorb its impact. Theodore Roszak states that our economic style is too great, too fast, and reckless for the ecological systems that must absorb its impact. The distinction between literature and these issues of the degradation of the environment is often overlooked, with the exception of certain categories such as "nature writing," "regionalism," or "interdisciplinary studies." Joseph Meeker's book, "The Comedy of Suruiual: Studies in Literary Ecology," offers a new reading of literature from an ecological viewpoint, arguing that literature should be examined carefully and honestly to discover its influence upon human behavior and the natural environment, determine its role in the welfare and survival of mankind, and offer insight into human relationships with other species and the world around us.

The text discusses the disciplinary revaluation of literature and its role in addressing public concerns. It highlights the need for a redefinition of what is significant on earth, as human rights extend to the non-human world. Ecoconsciousness is a particular contribution of regional literature, nature-writing, and other ignored forms that do not seem to respond to anthropocentric assumptions and methodologies.

The pastoral mode, which traditionally posits a green world where sophisticated urbanites retreat to learn from nature, is in need of reassessment due to its anthropocentric assumptions. The green world becomes a highly stylized and simplified creation of humanistic assumptions, distorting the true essence of each. The author suggests that the lasting appeal of pastoral is a testament to our instinctive or mythic sense of our ancestors as creatures of natural origins, who must return periodically to the earth for the rootholds of sanity denied by civilization.

Western American literature provides some appropriate versions of pastoral, such as Joseph Wod Krutch, a latter-day western writer who lived in New York City and wrote extensively on the natural world. Krutch argued that contemporary science had sucked dry modern life of its moral and spiritual values, and went on to become a scientist of a natural world in which he found many of the values he had presumed to be lost. He became a writer of natural history who, under the influence of Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, came to reassess his dualistic view of man's nature.

In conclusion, the text highlights the need for a reevaluation of pastoral in terms of a more complex understanding of nature and the importance of reevaluating the anthropocentric assumptions that underlie it. By doing so, we can better understand and appreciate the complex interplay between nature and human society.

Krutch's understanding of ego-consciousness evolved from ego-consciousness to eco-consciousness, as he realized that mankind's ingenuity had outpaced its wisdom. His investigation of the paradox of Man, who is a pafi of nature yet can become what he is only by being something also unique, led him to expand his vision of what is significant. This realization came to mean more to him than he realized and summed up a kind of pantheism which was gradually coming to be an essential part of the faith.

The tug of eco-consciousness as a corrective to ego-consciousness is a familiar feature of western work, as it is in the great preponderance of those considered "western writers" by birthright or long association. Much of what it means to be a western writer is to reject the contemptuous epithet, nature-lover.

Pastoralism in American literature has been a subject of debate and analysis, with Freud, Fromm, and Shepard arguing that a society can be sick due to the neurosis shared by millions of people. The literature of the American West constitutes a kind of reflective, as demonstrated by Harold P. Simonson's work "Hortology of the West." Recent studies of pastoral ideology reveal its pervasive appeal in American literature, with Leo Marx acknowledging its relevance but underestimating its significance. Lawrence Buell explores the experience of American pastoral in various frames and contexts, including social, political, gender-based, aesthetic, pragmatic, and environmental.

The emerging threat of ecological holocaust may increase the importance of pastoral as a literary and cultural force in the future. An ideology framed in such terms, with human participants taking their own place in and recognizing their obligation to the shared natural world, will be an appropriate pastoral construct for the future. The redefinition of pastoral requires that contact with the green world be acknowledged as something more than a temporary excursion to simplicity, which exists primarily for the sake of its eventual renunciation and return to the "real" world at the end. A pastoral for the present and the future calls for a better science of nature, a greater understanding of its complexity, a more radical awareness of its primal energy and stability, and a more acute questioning of the values of the supposedly sophisticated society to which we are bound.

The Western Literature Association (WLA) is poised to lead a critical shift in the literature profession, focusing on the integration of human with natural cycles of life. This shift could be influenced by ecological perspectives, such as racism and sexism, which are already being addressed in our pedagogy and theory. As the discipline of literary criticism retreats from public life into a professionalism characterized by its obscurity and inaccessibility, it is essential to begin asking fundamental questions about ourselves and the literature we profess.

The growing interest in nature writing is not limited to the American West, as writers and scholars from this region have been at the forefront of recent publications on nature writing. Ecological issues are both regional and global, transcending political boundaries. Deb Lylder has suggested an international meeting of the WLA, with significant participation from scholars in other countries, to examine and explore the literary-ecological connections raised here.

The most important function of literature today is to redirect human consciousness to a full consideration of its place in a threatened natural world. Nature writing, literature of place, regional writing, and regional writing of nature flourish now, even as it is ignored or denigrated by most other criticism.