Ecology and Literature: Ecocentric Personification from Antiquity to the Twenty-first Century

255 Pages·2008·1.64 MB·English

by  Bryan L. Moore (auth.)

Ecology and Literature

Ecology and Literature
Ecocentric Personification
from Antiquity to the
Twenty-first Century
Bryan L. Moore
ECOLOGY AND LITERATURE
Copyright © Bryan L. Moore, 2008.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-60669-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the US—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-60336-7 ISBN 978-0-230-61465-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230614659
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moore, Bryan L.
Ecology and literature : ecocentric personification from antiquity to
the twenty-first century / Bryan L. Moore.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. American literature—History and criticism. 2. Ecology in
literature. 3. Personification in literature. 4. Nature in literature.
5. Anthropomorphism in literature. 6. English literature—History and
criticism. 7. Environmental literature—History and criticism. I. Title.
PS169.E25M66 2008
810.9(cid:2)36—dc22 2008001226
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: September 2008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2011
For my parents

Contents
Prefatory Note ix
Part 1 Personification in Practice and Theory 1
Rhetorical Approach 3
Ecocentrism 5
Ecocentric Personification 10
Anthropomorphism: Resistance and Inevitability 13
The Ubiquity of Anthropomorphism 16
Anthropomorphism and Ethology 21
Anthropomorphism as Taboo and Norm in Nature Writing 24
Personification Theory 28
The Demotion of Personification 34
Personification and Allegory: Abrams and de Man 37
Part 2 Anthropocentric and Ecological
Anthropomorphism through Western History 43
Antiquity 44
Early Christian, Medieval 55
Early Science 62
The Enlightenment 69
English Eighteenth-Century Poetry 78
Wordsworth and the Birth of Ecological Poetry 85
Darwin 93
Part 3 Anthropomorphic Subversion in
American Literature 99
Early America 100
William Bartram 104
Early American Romanticism 107
Emerson 111
Herman Melville and Anti-Anthropocentric
Personification 117
Walt Whitman and “Song of Myself,” Chant 32 120
Emily Dickinson 125
viii Contents
The Naturalists (Stephen Crane, Frank Norris,
Jack London) 127
William Faulkner’s Bear 130
Robinson Jeffers and the Tragedy of
Anthropocentrism 131
Flannery O’Connor’s View of the Woods 134
Ecocentric Personification in Post–World War II
American Poetry 136
Part 4 Ecocentric Personification in
American Nature Writing 143
Henry David Thoreau 144
John Muir 151
Mary Austin 156
Aldo Leopold 160
Loren Eiseley 169
Edward Abbey 173
Annie Dillard 178
Terry Tempest Williams 182
Ecocentric Personification in Three
Twenty-first-Century Works 186
Conclusion 193
Notes 201
Works Cited 221
Index 237
Prefatory Note
T
his book is derived from my doctoral dissertation, Ecocentric
Personification in American Nature Writing (1996), but its genesis
goes back a dozen years earlier, as I began to be drawn deeply into
the work of Thoreau and other (for lack of a better term) “nature
writers.” For some reason, I took special interest in passages by these
writers that represent the natural world with human traits. Back then
I scarcely knew the meaning of the word “trope,” yet I realized that
these writers personify, not reflexively, as a prettifying cliché, or to
assert a childish understanding of nonhuman nature, but consciously,
to account for interrelationships, human and otherwise. They are less
concerned with alleging the consciousness of flora, fauna, and the
earth itself than with showing the kinship between human and
nonhuman nature and challenging the widely assumed but seldom
examined idea that the earth and all it contains exist for humans to
exploit on their often capricious demand.
Like most people, I hold the bias that humans are special, the
central event on the planet. I am, though, convinced that this position
bestows not a license to exploit at will but rather a sacred responsibil-
ity to take care of and preserve our still-beautiful and only habitable
planet, along with the million other species that share it with us.
Even though the vast majority of Americans (and, I would guess, the
majority of our fellow world citizens) hold a similar view, some would
ridicule this idea as flighty, unrealistic, or extreme. Yet one does not
have to look far to understand that the contrary position—an under-
standing of the earth as raw material for human consumption—has
been and continues to be dominant and largely unchallenged. We
are all paying a heavy price for this position. While my point of view
shows itself in the following pages, I have not intended to write a
creed but rather a history and rhetorical analysis of an idea that (as
I found out) existed well before Thoreau and that rose to greater
significance in literature and science during the nineteenth century.
For the completion of this project, I thank Arkansas State University
for awarding me a sabbatical for the Spring semester of 2006. Thanks