Like other late twentieth-century developments in literary theory and criticism, ecocriticism developed from concern with the ethics of reading. Just as gender studies or postcolonial discourse studies focus on the representation and construction of (wo)men and (post)colonial subjectivity by the arts, ecocriticism sets out to draw readers' attention to the role of nature and the environment by literary texts and within culture at large. As befits a brainchild of the environmental movement, ecocriticism frequently looks at the natural sphere from the point of view of ecology and environmentalism; that is to say it wants to take seriously the intrinsic value of the environment and at the same time acknowledges the negative impact of certain human lifestyles.
Many ecocritics see their
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Citation: Bayer, Gerd. "Ecocriticism". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 July 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=307, accessed 04 December 2024.]
