Ecocritical Readings Rethinking Nature and Environment

Through a reading of selected literary texts Shivani Jha integrates nature and society and demonstrates the outcome when one is severed from the other. The first two chapters on The Hungry Tide and Walden take into account the dispossessed aspect of both the human and the nonhuman worlds and point towards environmental conservation and sustainable development. The next two chapters based on the works of T.S Eliot and Herman Melville highlight the anthropocentric attitude of humans, the havoc it wreaks on the nonhuman world and the impact it has on the human psyche. The last two chapters are readings in deep ecology that dwell on works of Wordsworth and Hemingway directing the reader’s gaze to the pristine, natural world and the harmonious relationship that the humans are capable of having with it. The focus of the book is on reviewing the relationship of humans and environment and the need for recognizing the rights of the nonhumans-the aim that underlies the theoretical paradigm of ecocriticism.