Environmental Literature, Travel Writing, Ecocriticism: Sample Definitions

Environmental Literature, Travel Writing, Ecocriticism: Sample Definitions

When I am asked for a broad description of the field, I say that it is the study of explicitly environmental texts by way of any scholarly approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and human-nature relations in any literary text, even texts that seem, at first glance, oblivious of the nonhuman world. In other words, any conceivable style of scholarship becomes a form of ecocriticism if it's applied to certain kinds of literary works; and, on the other hand, not a single literary work anywhere utterly defies ecocritical interpretation, is off-limits to green reading.

From: Slovic, Scott. “Forum on Literatures of the Environment.” PMLA 114.5 (1999): 1102.


Travel writing often involves a central paradox. For a variety of reasons, travelers often make secret or leave out much of what they see and experience, and concentrate only on the most bizarre, exceptional or picturesque, that is, not on the things that best describe a region, country or territory but on those that may be most appealing or attractive to themselves or to potential readers (or those that best fit the latter's notions of what a place should look like). The writer thus tries to be faithful only to what s/he or his readers want, expect or are likely to enjoy. S/he wants to amuse, impress or astonish them rather than stimulate their critical powers or let them arrive at conclusions of their own about the places or cultures under scrutiny.

It is now generally understood that travel writing belongs to a wider structure of representation within which cultural affiliations and links -- culture itself -- can be analyzed, questioned, and reassessed. Travel writing is acknowledged to have some say both in the construction of the places traveled in, through representing them in particular ways, and also of the "traveler" society itself.

From: Romero, Ramon. “Silencing the Center(s) in American Travel Writing: From Washington Irving to Globe Trekker.” The European English Messenger 17.2 (2008).


The phenomenon of literature-and-environment studies is better understood as a congeries of semi-overlapping projects than as a unitary approach or set of claims. These projects include the following, and more: (1) consideration of the possibilities of certain forms of scientific inquiry (e.g., ecology and evolutionary biology) and social scientific inquiry (e.g., geography and social ecology) as models of literary reflection; (2) textual, theoretical, and historical analysis of human experience; (3) study of literature as a site of environmental-ethical reflection; (4) study of the rhetoric of any and all modes of environmental discourse, including creative writing but extending across the academic disciplines beyond them into the public sphere, especially the media, governmental institutions, corporate organizations, and environmental advocacy groups; and (6) inquiry into the relation of (environmental) writing to life and pedagogical practice.

From: Buell, Lawrence. “Forum on Literatures of the Environment.” PMLA 114.5 (1999): 1091.

See also the Ecocritical Library on the website of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE): http://www.asle.org/site/resources/ecocritical-library/