Ecocrit
carter neal (cen5k@faraday.clas.virginia.edu)
Wed, 05 Mar 1997 00:21:57 -0500
I was clicking through a few online journals from Johns Hopkins' muse
project, and I became aware that, aside from book reviews, most of the
essays on contemporary literature are about gender, race, and, less
explicitly, class issues. I began to think about our modern issues and
these subjects, and came to think that our culture was pretty much
covered by them. But it's not. In my opinion the single most important
issue of this, and future eras, is the environment, espescially the
population problem. But it seems ignored by the journals. I was first
introduced to Eco-criticism through a guest lecture in my American
Studies seminar by Dan Phillipon, and I was mildly interested, but I did
not come to any depth of understanding of the problem until recently. I
spent a few hours following my mouse around cyberspace reading articles
(for anyone interested, a good reference point is the links page at the
Wallace Stegner Environmental Center at
http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/stegner/ecolink.html, or check out the Association
for the Study of Literature and the Environment, ASLE, at
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~djp2n/asle.html) and I found a new
respect for the problems of our planet.
My question is Why? Why do critics not have much to say on it? or, Do
they and am I just unable to find where their papers are? Do we need to
expand Postmodernism to include the environment, is it just fine without
it, or does it already include it?
Specifically for our class, **how much attention should we give the
toxic cloud in White Noise?** **Do any of the other books approach this
issue?**
Thoughts...?
Carter