Abstract

Ecocriticism, an academic fallout of environmentalism and its contemporary agenda, is a new critical movement that attempts to link literary criticism and theory with today’s ecological issues. It studies the relationship between the science of ecology and literature by applying ecological concepts to literature. Its aim is to synthesize environmental matters and literary criticism by focusing on the analyses of the literary representations of nature in literary texts, and the literary constructions of the environmental crisis in eco-literary discourses. The ecosystems sustaining all life on earth have become critically endangered by our growing numbers and levels of consumption. This paper aims to define “literary ecology” suggesting that literary criticism should explore the relationship between humans and the other beings, thereby examining the influence of literature on human behaviour and the natural environment. In an attempt to re-connect nature, this paper delineates ecocriticism as a literary tool to foster a mutual symbiotic co-existence for both humans and the non-humans in the same biosphere.