Green Literature Theory - Coursework Example

English Green Literature Theory A myriad of discussions about the environment have driven interest in the research of literature about the environment. Scholars largely consider higher learning of English literature about revisiting literary giants who were prominent in the past. A more or less addition to this line of higher learning is the study of literature about the environment. As literature entails living and nonliving things, it should interact with the environment. Often referred to as Eco criticism, green literature is presently a catchphrase in the educational world. The following paper introduces, explores, and analyzes a theory about green literature by reexamining former literature about the environment, the authors’ relationships with it, and any significant effects the work has had on today’s scholastic community keen on green developments and literature. Theory: It is vital for literary academics and students to discuss the environment as it is discussing civil rights and gender equality because it offers a new approach on ecological challenges. When insights vary, coming up with an alternative solution is likely. Research question: How do students and literary academics relate to the environment? Literature Review Green education goes as far back as the early 1970s, during a seminar on human ecology in Stockholm (Anderson, Slovic, and O’Grady 345). This meeting was groundbreaking because human activity and the environment were priorities in its agenda. The meeting ended with the need to widen the foundation of measures by looking for engagement at personal, business, communal, and worldwide levels. The conference directly acknowledged the association between education and the surfacing system of what UNEP calls sustainable development. Attendees demanded access to ecological literature for everyone. The 1978 Tbilisi Declaration reinforced the original measure and unfolded from the intergovernmental meeting on green education (Anderson et al., 345). This international proclamation noted the need for and suggested an interdisciplinary system for ecological learning. Then, education about the environment was inclined to focus exclusively on the development of the K-12 syllabus. As a result, higher learning was left to depend on related studies and learning. Eco-criticism is researching the correlation between literary works and the physical environment that demands looking into literature from a sustainability angle. Literary academics started questioning what their subject had to add to the understanding of the developing ecological disaster. While literary studies have always involved nature and the ecological surrounding from an innovative and artistic approach, green literature necessitates a close, serious exploration of nature and the ecological surroundings. According to the United States’ ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment), literature and the ecological surrounding is an interest for those keen on their physical, natural surroundings, its implications, and linguistic and cultural illustrations (Anderson et al., 345). ASLE has a number of similar organizations across the globe that issue articles, texts, and ordinary newsletters on developments made pertaining to the environment. Additionally, these bodies hold conferences to endorse interest in green literature. This organization is an example of how important literature about the environment is for today’s scholars and students. While interests in green literature have been filled by election in the United States, it ought to become a central course in higher learning institutes. Raising the frequency of debates about the studies conducted on the environment and cultivating awareness of ecological problems by citizens have just powered interest in the research of literary studies and the environment. By researching correlations between nature, culture, and ecological surroundings, green literature also entails the examination of features like ecofeminism, eco-poetics, and eco-justice (Fadiman 88). Such research makes the much-required contribution towards progressing sustainability learning past the immediate community of academics, which has expressed concerns about it. As a result, contemplating how higher learning might seem in the next few years should be easier. Green literature is as effective an optional course for students from other fields as it is a primary interdisciplinary division that incorporates values, social sciences, ethics, and gender studies. For instance, students pursuing ecological engineering, biology, botany, or zoology sciences can assume green programs at their institutions (Anderson et al. 345). Potential activists, nature photographers, and environmental engineers can acquire an insight of eco-criticism through green literature. Such an insight can lead to an innovative and serious approach towards the environment instead of a merely scientific one. This shows that not being limited by subjects can assist students in widening their horizons on ecological matters. Partially an outcome of the merging of the concerns of ecological learning and literary development, green literature has sought after including the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of change and other features. Green literature in today’s higher learning institutions encompasses learning how to create and ensure a sustainable future and worldwide citizenship. Supporters of sustainability education have contended that green education is geared externally and probably too instrumentally based. As a result, scholars and institutions need to think of the internal dimensions of valuative mental and perceptual transition (Anderson et al. 345). Sustainability shows both the basis and the likelihood of a revolution of academic paradigm, hence green education. Any manifestation of ecological or green education indirectly or directly depends on a perspective of ecological surrounding and sustainability and learning. Additionally, and possibly profounder, these perspectives show a global or realistic view. Comprehending green education is complicated by the occurrence of a range of hypothetical and practical explanations, as well as the fact that sustainability is partially under and over today’s widespread modernist view. This view is still widespread in the literature and broader education in spite of the critique of postmodernist discussions. In “Eco-Defense,” Anderson frequently labels this view as “technocentric, dualist, and reductionist” (345). As a result, revolutionary tensions label the discussions as well since education about the environment is an outcome of both past and developing global views. Jane Goodall wrote “Respect for Life” in 1934 as a textual remembrance of her work on select apes and primates in Africa (Fadiman 82). This work serves as an early form of eco-criticism that indirectly features aspects of green literature like ecofeminism and eco-poetics that today’s literary scholars can discuss extensively. Goodall’s work also serves as a tool for learners who embrace a “green revolution that will turn aside the relentless march to total annihilation that was set in motion by the industrial revolution” (Fadiman 85). Goodall contributes to sustainability by stipulating the living behaviors and patterns of chimpanzees and baboons in Africa (Fadiman 84). Amidst the increasing expectations of green literature from professional groups, financiers, policy makers, undergraduates, and rising interest amongst scholars and senior administration, a rising number of colleges and universities are prominent in undertaking measures for sustainability. Kurt Vonnegut’s “Galápagos” is a narrative about the fight human beings are currently undergoing with their own minds for the sake of survival. The evolution of human beings is the center of the novel’s storyline and Vonnegut makes an appealing and educational plot out of it. The plot entails an impending cataclysm of an apocalyptic nature that human beings work hard to prevent or get through. Combined with hilarious twists and superb character development, “Galápagos” sheds light on the effects human beings have on the environment and the consequences of the lack of widespread awareness about them (Vonnegut 251). The cry for massive awareness about the environment amongst human beings is Vonnegut’s key message in “Galápagos.” The author supports this argument by demonstrating how a global economic turmoil unfolds and how a pandemic that causes infertility spreads can endanger an entire intelligent species within a very short time. A form of retrogression in terms of physical, mental, and civilizational development is depicted when the pandemic causes human beings to give birth to infants with fur, fins, and small brains. Readers can compare this mutative development as a symbolic interpretation of the fragility of civilization, even for a species that is seemingly intelligent. The author writes “Galápagos” from a personal point of view and perception of human beings and their relationship with the environment. Here, Vonnegut indirectly contemplates the current state of this relationship and the nature of its likely future, especially following two world wars. The story articulates the author’s creativity, imagination, and brilliant way of rationalizing situations. According to Vonnegut, his “wry comment on how little most of us were likely to accomplish in life, no matter how long we lived, isn’t my own invention” (Vonnegut 278). Vonnegut uses his pessimism to propose that human beings must retrogress to avoid certain self-destruction. In “Oryx and Crake,” Margaret Atwood shows how a damaged environment looks like. Atwood says “Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink like lips” to show the usefulness of certain animals and what harm they would endure in the event of a destroyed habitat (Atwood 17). In “Learning How To Die In The Anthropocene,” Roy Scranton expounds on the future of humanism from a climatist’s point of view. The greatest issue humans face today is “is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead” (Scranton 2013). This poetic expression shows Scranton’s cry for the need for harmony amongst an intelligent species at a vulnerable stage of civilizational development. “Of Man and the Stream of Time” is a story full of enlightening insights about nature that have been budding in the author’s minds for a decade. The author, Rachel Carson, says, “The whole era of man seems but a moment--but how portentous a moment! It was only within the past million years or so that the race of man arose” Scranton 7). Carson suggests that ecological surroundings are much older than human beings and this is a key reason or respecting it by preventing any unnatural harm coming to it. Applicability Items on green literature in all learning institutions today can include a historical point of view of the global and local conventions that molded the course of the subject today. This way, literary scholars and students can be exposed to today’s trends, cases, and problems. Scholars and students can examine the status of green literature today through modern case studies from K-12, higher learning, and community-founded projects. Covering each creative case ever identified is near impossible. As a result, institutions can promote the adherence to a single case study and viewing how it may result in surplus learning by students outside the regular green literature course (Fadiman 87). Today, green literature differentiates itself from other subjects as initiatives and materials extend syllabus development, studies, operational frameworks, and similar outreach. Efforts towards the spanning and development of green literature are always being established. This is achievable through the incorporation of new and old information, building of new relationships, and trying to bring sustainability behavior into line by academic institutes, professional level, and organizational frameworks to accomplish the desired learning outcomes known as green education. In 2002, the National Research Council announced that it was in the middle of implementing a change to a global community wherein human societies are soaring, demanding, connected, dispersed, and diverse than any period in the past (Anderson et al., 346). The kind of revolution necessary for reversing this course in terms of sustainability is hard to come by because it is cultural, behavioral, scientific, political, and economic. As a result, new approaches in the sense of new information, devices, and relationships are necessary and green literature under green education can assure this major transition. In conclusion, coming up with an alternative solution is likely when insights vary. As a result, it is as vital for literary academics and students to discuss the environment as it is discussing civil rights and gender equality because it offers a new point of view on ecological challenges. Green literature repeatedly emphasizes the power of just bringing devoted and inquisitive individuals into the same room for brainstorming. Green literature encourages the wisdom to surface from a group by utilizing their energy towards constructing new, innovative syntheses of concepts, initiatives, or approaches. The characteristics of green education today and the possibility of an unsustainable future need a primary revolution of an educational nature. Major transitions are instrumental in the development of syllabuses, academic, policy, and organizational constructs. The battle to overcome institutional inactivity and disciplinary norms on green education and sustainability is common all through the worldwide higher learning culture. The industrious efforts of the authors of green literature are relevant in many aspects and necessary for understanding the environment. Works Cited Anderson, Lorraine, Scott Slovic, and John P. O’Grady. Literature And The Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture. New York: Longman, 1999. Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Vancouver: McClelland and Stewart, 2003. Carson, Rachel. Of Man and the Stream of Time. New York: Scripps College, 1962. Fadiman, Clifton. Living Philosophies. New York: Doubleday: 1990. Scranton, Roy. Learning How To Die In The Anthropocene. 2013. Print. New York Times. 2014, Oct. 21. Vonnegut, Kurt. Galápagos. New York: Delacorte Press, 1985. Read More