ENLT 371Literature and the Environment



LIT 373 Literature and the Environment

Microtheme 1

Due Tuesday, October 4, by email.

To articulate some of your thoughts about how the voices in Unit 1 speak about ecological issues in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, write a two-page essay (not 1½; not 2½), discussing issues in our readings from either Momaday or Dillard or both in light of the American Transcendentalist and ecocritical readings we’ve read.

Our introduction to ecocritical definitions and issues in the course offers recurring questions, specifically around Frederick Jackson Turner’s and James Clifford’s articulations of different ways looking at links between nature and culture: as 1) a binary via the “frontier thesis” of oppositional constructs between civilization and wilderness and related dualities; or as 2) a web of relations. Respond to our readings, lectures, and discussions in this 1st Unit overview of the ways different voices construct possibilities for defining wilderness and civilization, self and other, culture and nature, or “Me” and “Not-Me.” For your specific focus, follow your own interest, consider the topics below, and any of the discussion questions to launch your focus. Remember to keep a textual/literary focus in your one-sentence thesis statement.

Try for a well-structured essay, with 1) an intro paragraph that sets up a context for the one-sentence thesis statement typed in bold toward the end of the paragraph (= deductive structure; or if you want to try inductive structure, put the bold-font thesis statement in the final paragraph); 2) a set of body paragraphs that explain and give examples, drawing on textual citations, to support the thesis; and 3) a short concluding paragraph that does more than repeat the intro, suggesting other directions or implications of the thesis (which would first show up here in the inductive approach). This clear structure does not mean that the prose has to be stiff. Be as lively or wacky as you want, as well as rigorous in your critical thinking. There is room in literary criticism for personal response as well as critical analysis.

Refer to the guidelines handout for writing and grading criteria. Look for specific passages that reflect your larger ideas, and quote those passages as you develop your thesis. (Thus a bibliography is required.) Feel free to write both critical analysis and personal response, to be autobiographical, to discuss the reader as well as the text – as long as you tie the discussion closely and critically to citations quoted from the texts. Remember to use oodles of citations from the texts, shaped by your commentary. See Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual for proper MLA in-text citation and bibliographic form, or you are welcome to use the standard format from another discipline of your major (e.g., social sciences or physical sciences).

Format The essay should be double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in type of no less than 10pt. An optional cover page with your name, the course, the date, and the assignment is ok (to add space to the essay pages). Include an original title. Again, the essay should include short, direct quotations to support your thesis. A final page should include a Works Cited, also in consistent format. (See the Diana Hacker guide in the bookstore under ENLT 000.)

Required -- Write a self-evaluation after the Works Cited: what do you feel are the paper’s strengths and weaknesses, and what might you change about the paper if you only had the time.

Combine any of the following and/or customize our class discussions for a topic to fit your special interests. Strive for close reading of particular textual passages, expanding from those lines to elucidate larger themes. If you like, you can shape any question as a comparison/contrast between two writers.

1. Considering any aspect of the definitions and issues we’ve put forward so far for “ecocriticism” from Glotfelty, White, or class discussion, compare the approach of Momaday and Dillard to a specific issue or symbol. Where in our readings do you see any of the historical resonances that White described? How does Glotfelty’s sense of “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” help to focus your reading of Momaday and/or Dillard? How does focusing on the relationship between nature and culture in the text help get at the meaning or dynamics in these writers?

2. Take a key idea from one of the essay handouts and apply it to one of the other readings in the unit, e.g., how does Silko’s perspective on pueblo world view relate to Momaday’s representations of Kiowa culture? or how does Percy’s notion of “the loss of the creature” relate to Dillard’s prose? How does Percy relate to Momaday? or Silko to Dillard? & what are the implications of such comparisons for understanding the text? For acting on the author’s messages?

3. Using key examples, discuss the imagery used by two or more authors from this unit to characterize a specific theme in American approaches to the environment. What do those images imply about the possibilities of cultural exchange between binary and nexus ways of thinking and acting?

4. Construct an argument to summarize one or two key themes among the writers in this unit – do they or do they not share key themes? Or argue that they do not share themes. Then contrast/compare those thematic situations among different voices. Show how those larger issues move through specific lines of their texts? What significance does such a comparison/contrast hold for questions of American environmentalism?

5. Choosing one or more sections of Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, discuss how the three different voices interrelate, compare, contrast, blend, or diverge. How does Momaday’s multivocal approach relate to a nexus paradigm of personal identity? Of social identity? Of nature and culture?

6. Reading closely in Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk, tease out the principle or values in her prose and discuss how she sees the relationship between culture and nature, or religion and creation. For example, “I dangled my fingers in the water, figuring it would be worth it” (76). When she is flirting here with piranhas, what does her text suggest about why she goes to nature? Or what is “God in the Doorway” about? What is she after? Why does she write about these intense experiences?

& again consider any of the discussion questions on the handouts for starting points as well.

Extra credit: In no more than two pages, discuss a conflict-resolution approach to a contemporary environmental issue that concerns you. Consider how a systems approach, rather than either/or thinking, might address social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the issue as well as biological ones.

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