Ecology and Literature

BRYAN L. MOORE is Associate Professor of English, Arkansas State University, USA.

"Moore argues convincingly that subtle and obvious forms of personification are ubiquitous in Western culture from ancient Greece to the present, and he claims that this trope, especially when used carefully and self-consciously, is an effective way to compel audiences toward a sense of personal connection with the broader universe, toward sympathy with nature. This is an exciting and original stance and will be appreciated by literary scholars and ecocritics as a timely and enduring contribution." - Scott Slovic, Professor of Literature and Environment, University of Nevada, Reno and the author of Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility

• PART I: PERSONIFICATION IN PRACTICE AND THEORY Rhetorical Approach Ecocentrism Ecocentric Personification Anthropomorphism: Resistance and Inevitability The ubiquity of Anthropomorphism Anthropomorphism and Ethology Anthropomorphism as Taboo and Norm in Nature Writing Personification Theory The Demotion of Personification Personification and Allegory: Abrams and de Man PART II: ANTHROPOCENTRIC AND ECOLOGICAL ANTHROPOMORPHISM THROUGH WESTERN HISTORY Antiquity Early Christian, Medieval Early Science The Enlightenment English Eighteenth-Century Poetry Wordsworth and the Birth of Ecological Poetry Darwin PART III: ANTHROPOMORPHIC SUBVERSION IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Early America William Bartram Early American Romanticism Emerson Herman Melville and Anti-anthropocentric Personification Walt Whitman and 'Song of Myself,' Chant 32 Emily Dickinson The Naturalists (Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London) William Faulkner's Bear Robinson Jeffers and the Tragedy of Anthropocentrism Flannery O'Connor's View of the Woods Ecocentric Personification in post World War II American Poetry PART IV: ECOCENTRIC PERSONIFICATION IN AMERICAN NATURE WRITING Henry David Thoreau John Muir Mary Austin Aldo Leopold Loren Eiseley Edward Abbey Annie Dillard Terry Tempest Williams Ecocentric Personification in Three Twenty-First Century Works