Tom M. Wilson

I wrote the following page mainly for academics and academic students of literature. Ecocriticism is literary criticism which is concerned with nature writing and ecological themes in all literature. If you’re after some actual nature writing, you might try the following reading list: Watermark Literary Society Reading List (This one is an Australian slanted list- it is actually a list of the writers who have been invited to a festival in NSW on literature and nature - but for my own list you can check out the nature related writings I’ve included in my page ‘The Canon”.)

If you want to start by getting a rough and ready idea of what ecocriticism is, have a look at the Guardian article

If you want to get a proper acquaintance with the field my choice of the top 22 volumes in this area follow in a bibliography (below this you will find a selection of Australian criticism). These are the best books I’ve encountered in the past four or five years of reading work written in ecocriticism (written at the end of 2005, but with the odd addition since then).

If I was asked to narrow things down even further I’d place the two works I’ve mentioned by Jonathan Bate, the two works I’ve mentioned by Lawrence Buell, the two books by Terry Gifford, and the book by Glen Love as the seven most interesting and broadly themed ecocritical books written to date.

My ecocritical study of the work of John Fowles is published by Rodopi.

HERE’S THE BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Bate, Jonathan. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. London: Routledge, 1991.
• – The Song of the Earth. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Begiebing, Robert J. and Grumbling, Owen. (eds.), ‘Twentieth Century British Nature Writing, The Tradition Endures’, Medford, NJ: Plexus, 1990, p.452.
• Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995.
• –‘The Ecocritical Insurgency’, New Literary History, 30 (1999), 699-712.
• –Writing for an Endangered World. Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001.
• Carroll, Joseph. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Coupe, Lawrence. ed. The Green Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 2000.
• Fowles, John. The Tree. New York: The Ecco Press, 1979.
• Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. London: Routledge, 1999.
• –Reconnecting with John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2006.
• Glotfelty, Cheryll. ‘Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis’, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996.
• Hayman, Richard. Trees, Woodlands and Western Civilization. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.
• Keith, W. J. The Rural Tradition. Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1975.
• Kerridge, Richard. ‘Nature in the English Novel’, Literature of Nature, An International Sourcebook. Patrick D. Murphy (ed.), London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998, pp.149-57.
• Love, Glen. Practical Ecocriticism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.
• Marinelli, Peter V. Pastoral. London: Methuen & Co, 1971.
• Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
• Midgley, Mary. Science and Poetry. London: Routledge, 2001.
• Snyder, Gary. ‘Language Goes Two Ways’, A Place in Space, Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 1995, pp.173-80.
• Westling, Louise. ‘Introduction’, The Environmental Tradition in English Literature. John Parham (ed.). Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002, pp.1-8.
• ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment [This is the peer reviewed academic journal for ecocriticism.]

Australian criticism on environmental literature

As far as I know Australian literary criticism has yet to really produce first-rate ecologically themed work about our home (if you have ideas of work that might be added to this list please let me know! I haven’t read everything).

• Banerjee, Soma. “Mirroring the Land: The Nature Poetry in Australian Literature”. Commonwealth Review, New Delhi, 2:1-2 (1990-91), 76-85.
• Bennett, Bruce. An Australian Compass, South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991.
• Elliott, Brian. The Landscape of Australian Poetry. Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney: Cheshire, 1967.
• Griffiths, Tom (ed.), Ecology and Empire, Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1997.
• Kane, Paul. “Woeful shepherds”: Anti-Pastoral in Australian Poetry’, Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World, Judith Ryan (ed.), London: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp.269-284.
• Malouf, David. The Spirit of Play, Sydney: ABC Books, 1998.
• Mulligan, Martin, ‘Feet to the Ground in storied landscapes: Disrupting the colonial legacy with a poetic politics’, Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-colonial Era, London: Earthscan, 2003, pp.268-89.
• O’Connor, Mark. “Evolutionary Myth in the New Nature Poetry”. Meanjin, 40:2 (1981). 225-233.
• Tacey, David. Edge of the Sacred:Transformation in Australia, Da, North Blackburn: HarperCollins, 1995.