'What can an environment do? And what does it mean for us, as human beings, to participate in it? While these may not be new questions, our increasing awareness of environmental changes and ecological crisis bring these to the fore. It is fitting then, that the past two decades have seen the rise of literary ecocriticism, as scholars begin to turn their attention beyond the social or individualized context of the human, to the “meta-context” of the greater biosphere (Clark 4). According to Glen Love, ecocriticism provides a “fresh look” at literature as part of a larger project of making sense of ourselves and our “place” by acknowledging physical or material context (11). To this end, unlike other modes of literary/cultural analysis, ecocriticism draws particularly on the science of ecology (Garrard 5). Ecologist Neil Evernden has argued that the humanities should have long ago included nonhuman ecology in their study, as the conception of humans as separate and discrete entities is anthropocentric and arbitrary. He questions rigid species boundaries, and even living–nonliving distinctions, arguing that “there is no such thing as an individual, only an individual-in-context, individual as a component of place, defined by place” (20). In other words, humans and nonhumans alike are not separate from their “environment,” but continuously intermingled with other forces of influence. The more recent development of ecocriticism, which takes “the basic premise of the interrelatedness of a human cultural activity like literature and the natural world that encompasses it” (Love 38) is reminiscent of Evernden’s claims.' (Introduction)
