Environment in Literature - Essay Example

Environmental issues and literature The debates around environmental issues caused the necessity to reflect the main problems in the literature. The so-called eco-criticism represents the relations between ecology and literature. The writers want to determine what place the literary products play in the struggle with environmental crisis and how the environment issues are represented in literature. Literature has always been very close to our life, thus it should be also close to the environment.

Thus, different papers, books and newsletters are currently published in order to make people interested in the study of nature and literature. Different scholars share their experience and thoughts about environment in literature. The main goal of the scientists and writers is to make people understand that they should not try to control the whole nature. Wildness should exist and we should protect this existence not interfering into the natural processes. This is the main idea of the following essays: Respect for life by Jane Goodall, Eco-Defense by Edward Abbey and Of Man and the Stream of Time by Rachel Carson.

“I wish to speak today of man’s relation to nature and more specifically of man’s attitude towards nature a generation ago this would perhaps have been an academic subject of little interest to any but philosophers. Today it is a subject of immediate and sometimes terrifying relevance” (Carson). Now the environmental problems are not the issues, which have to be resolved by scientists, but they are social issues, which should be declared and literature is a perfect tool. Works Cited Fadiman, Clinton.

Living Philosophers. Doubleday; 1st edition, 1990