Exploring the Ethical and Aesthetic Representations of Wetlands in Literary Texts: A Comparative Ecocritical Study

Swapnit Pradhan, Nagendra Kumar

Abstract


Literary texts, often products of social structures, influence the way people live and shape society. They affect the way we view and interact with living beings as well as non-living elements. Texts possess great potential to fashion people's geographical imagination. Wetlands such as swamps, marshes, and mangrove forests, for example, have varied significances in different temporal and spatial spectrums, but critical scholarship around ethics and representation of wetlands is largely unexplored. This paper, therefore, will primarily seek to analyse textual representations of wetlands in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1890), H. D. Thoreau’s Walking (1997), Aldo Leopold’s Marshland Elegy (2001), Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019), and Sarah Joseph’s Gift in Green (2011). By comparing and contrasting these depictions by writers from the Global North and Global South across centuries, we seek to demarcate a clear line of distinction as well as overlaps in the behaviour and feelings of human beings towards the wetlands. The paper emphasises ethical and aesthetic representations of wetlands through the lenses of ecocritical and bioregional theories of Rob Nixon, Simon Estok, and Tom Lynch. Therefore, socio-political analysis and cultural significance conveyed by these depictions may present insights concerning resentment, adoration, aestheticism, commodification, survival, divinity, and fear.

 

Keywords: ecocriticism; environmentalism; Global South; landscape ethics; wetlands


Full Text:

PDF

References


Amzah, N., Ismail, H., & Ng, L. S. (2023). Climate change in the movie Weathering with You-critical discourse analysis of environmental issues. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 29(3), 285–307. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2023-2903-20.

Bergthaller, H. (2017). On the margins of ecocriticism: A European perspective. In C. Schmitt and C. Solte-Gresser (Eds.), Literatur und Ökologie: Neue literature-und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven (pp. 55-64). Aisthesis.

Bunyan, J. (1890). The pilgrim's progress. New York, G. H. McKibbin. https://www.loc.gov/item/00000824/. (Original work published 1678)

Carson, R. (2002). Silent spring. HarperAcademic. (Original work published 1962)

Crèvecœur, J. H. (2009). Letters from an American farmer. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1782)

DeLoughrey, E., & Handley, G. B. (2011). Introduction. In E. DeLoughrey & G. B. Handley (Eds.), Postcolonial ecologies: Literatures of the environment (pp. 3-39). Oxford University Press.

Dewey, J., & Tufts, J. H. (1908). Ethics. Henry Holt and Company.

Eklund, H. (2020). After wetlands. Criticism-a Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 62(3), 457‒478. https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.62.3.0457

Estok, S. C. (2018). The ecophobia hypothesis. Routledge.

Gadgil, M., & Guha, R. (1995). Ecology and equity: The use and abuse of nature in contemporary India. Routledge.

Ghosh, A. (2019). Gun island. Penguin Randomhouse India.

Giblett, R. (2016). Cities and wetlands: The return of the repressed in nature and culture. Bloomsbury.

Guha, R. (1989). Radical American environmentalism and wilderness preservation. Environmental Ethics, 11(1), 71-83.

Guha, R., & Alier, J. M. (1997). Varieties of environmentalism: Essays north and south. Earthscan.

Howarth, W. (1999). Imagined territory: The writing of wetlands. New Literary History, 30(3), 509-539. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057553

Huxley, A. (1964). Wordsworth in the tropics. In A. Huxley (Ed.), Collected essays (pp. 6-10). Bantam Books.

Jain, J. (2007). Introduction. In J. Jain (Ed.), Films, literature, and culture: Deepa Mehta's elements trilogy (pp. 1-9). Rawat Publications.

Jana, P., & Padmaja, C. V. (2023). Veins of poison: Intersections of green criminology, environmental justice, and toxicity in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 29(3), 64–76. https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2023-2903-06.

Joseph, S. (2011). Gift in green. Harper Collins India.

Kingsolver, B., & Belt, A. G. (2002). Last stand: America’s virgin lands. National Geographic.

Kiviat, E. (2021). Wetland imagery in American novels. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 4(1), 100158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100158

Kumar, M. P. (2011). “Cosmopolitanism within”: The case of R.K. Narayan’s fictional Malgudi. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47(5), 558–570. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2011.614804

Lateiner, D. (1992). Heroic proxemics: Social space and distance in the Odyssey. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 122(1992), 133-163.

Leopold, A. (2001). Marshland elegy. In A. Leopald (Ed.), A sand county almanac with essays on conservation (pp. 159-166). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1949)

Lynch, T., Glotfelty, C., & Armbruster, K. (2012). Introduction. In T. Lynch, C. Glotfelty, & K. Armbruster (Eds.), The bioregional imagination: Literature, ecology, and place (pp. 1-32). University of Georgia Press.

Mukherjee, U. P. (2010). Postcolonial environments: Nature, culture and the contemporary Indian novel in English. Palgrave Macmillan.

Nixon, R. (2011). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press.

Paterson, R. (2022). Utopia, Arcadia and the Forest of Arden. Multicultural Shakespeare, 26(41), 147–164. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.26.09

Pradhan, S., & Kumar, N. (2023a). Destabilising 'development': A critique of capitalocene in Sarah Joseph’s Gift in Green. Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, 11(21), 85-9. https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2023.17

Pradhan, S., & Kumar, N. (2023b). Interrogating survival and sustainability in the ecocinema Kantara. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2023.2259261

Raimondi, L. (2016). Black jungle, beautiful forest: A postcolonial, green geocriticism of the Indian Sundarbans. In Tally, R.T. & Battista, C.M. (Eds.), Ecocriticism and geocriticism: Overlapping territories in environmental and spatial literary studies (pp. 113-134). Palgrave Macmillan.

Ramsar. (2018, September 1). The importance of wetlands. The Convention on Wetlands. https://www.ramsar.org/about/our-mission/importance-wetlands#:~:text=Wetlands%20are%20vital%20for%20human,and%20animals%20depend%20for%20survival

Ramsar Bureau. (2002, February 2). Wetlands – an inspiration in art, literature, music, and folklore. Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. https://www.ramsar.org/sites/default/files/documents/tmp/pdf/info/cultural_heritage_e10.pdf

Thayer, R. L., Jr. (2003). LifePlace: Bioregional thought and practice. University of California Press.

Thoreau, H. D. (1997). The project Gutenberg ebook of walking by Henry David Thoreau. Project Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/files/1022/1022-h/1022-h.htm (Original work published 1851)

Tiffin, H., & Huggan, G. (2007). Green postcolonialism. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 9(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698010601173783

Tuan, Y. (1990). Topophilia: A study of environmental perceptions, attitudes, and values. Columbia University Press.

Vileisis, A. (1997). Discovering the unknown landscape: A History of America's wetlands. Island Press.

Wordsworth, W. (2022). Guide to the lakes. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1929).




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2024-3002-02

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2247

ISSN : 0128-5157