Aldo
Leopold argues for the creation of a Land Ethic to preserve and conserve
the environment. Using the works of Abbey, Tempest Williams,
and McKibben, investigate the state of the Land Ethic in the United States
some 60 years after Leopold wrote his seminal essay. In your paper,
consider the following questions: What is a Land Ethic? How is it reflected
in the work of these writers? Is a Land Ethic still relevant?
Many
of the works we have studied this semester present powerful, unique metaphors
for describing the life in harmony with nature. Emerson, for example, becomes
a "transparent eyeball"; Leopold invites us to think like a mountain.
Select one such guiding metaphor, analyze the meaning and insight it offers
and then apply this metaphor to a different work we have read this term.
Analyze what the application of this metaphor reveals about the text and
what this new context reveals about the strengths and limitations of the
metaphor.
Emerson,
Thoreau, and McKibben can be viewed as nature writers of the Eastern United
States. In contrast, we can group Bird,
Abbey, and Tempest Williams as nature writers of the Western United States.
Explore the impact of geography on writing by comparing and contrasting
how these writers use different (or similar) descriptive techniques to present
these starkly different landscapes.
In
one of his footnotes to "Where I lived and What I lived For,"
Thoreau editor Bill McKibben observes:
"Those who persist in imagining that Walden is a collection
of nature essays might note that it is only here we meet the pond"
(80). Why does the label "nature essays" seem
to be an inadequate or incorrect description of Walden? How would
you classify or characterize this work and its purpose? Using the three essays we read in class and others
of your own choice, support your own classification of Walden.
Although developed
most fully by Terry Tempest Williams in Refuge, many of the writers
we have read this semester have noted a relationship between nature and
the body. Compare and contrast the relationship that Tempest Williams
posits between the environment and the health (physical and/or psychological)
of the body. In particular, consider how this relationship is presented
figuratively and literally.
In his "Author's
Introduction" to Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey writes: "I
have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as
a medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal"
(xii). Explain this quotation about writing about the natural environment
and then use its range (from imitation to evocation)to analyze who three
other authors of your choice write about their natural environment.
Professor
Cheryl Glotfelty, one of the founders of ecocriticism, explains: "Simply
defined, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature
and the physical environment." In Beginning: Theory An Introduction
to Literary and Cultural Theory, Professor Peter Barry elaborates that
an ecocritical reading of a work of literature "Often . . . is just
a matter of approaching perhaps very familiar texts with a new alertness
to this dimension {the relationship between literature and the physical
environment], a dimension which has perhaps always hovered above the text,
but without ever receiving our full attention before" (258).
Barry summarizes that ecocritics
re-read
major works from an ecocentric perspective, with particular attention
to the representation of the natural world.