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Critical theory is not a fixed canon but a living, evolving field. New approaches emerge as society changes, as new questions become urgent, and as existing theories reveal their limitations. This lesson introduces four emerging critical approaches that are increasingly relevant to A-Level English Literature: eco-criticism, disability studies, queer theory, and reader-response theory.
Eco-criticism (also called environmental criticism or green studies) examines the relationship between literature and the natural environment. It asks:
| Concept | Definition |
|---|---|
| Nature writing | Literature that takes the natural world as its primary subject |
| Pastoral | A literary mode that idealises rural life — presenting nature as a space of harmony, innocence, and escape from urban corruption. Eco-critics are sceptical of the pastoral because it obscures the reality of agricultural labour and environmental degradation |
| Anthropocentrism | The assumption that humans are the most important species — that nature exists for human use. Eco-criticism challenges this assumption |
| The Anthropocene | The proposed geological epoch in which human activity has become the dominant influence on the Earth's climate and environment |
| Place | Eco-criticism is attentive to the specific places in which literature is set — not as "background" but as active, meaningful environments |
| Thinker | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Lawrence Buell | The Environmental Imagination (1995) — defined eco-criticism as a field; established criteria for "environmental" texts |
| Greg Garrard | Ecocriticism (2004) — accessible introduction; analyses key tropes (pastoral, wilderness, apocalypse) |
| Timothy Morton | Ecology Without Nature (2007) — argues that the concept of "nature" is itself part of the problem; we need to think ecologically without relying on a romanticised idea of nature |
| Text | Eco-Critical Reading |
|---|---|
| Waterland | The Fens are not merely setting but the novel's central subject. The relationship between water and land — reclamation and inundation — is a metaphor for the relationship between human civilisation and natural processes. The novel's argument that "water always comes back" can be read eco-critically as a warning about the limits of human control over nature |
| Skirrid Hill | Sheers's poetry is deeply attentive to the Welsh landscape — not as pastoral backdrop but as an active, historically layered presence. "Mametz Wood" shows how landscape preserves history; "Hill Fort" shows how landscape outlasts human habitation. The collection implies that the land is more permanent — and more important — than the human stories played out upon it |
| The Handmaid's Tale | Gilead's origins lie in environmental catastrophe — pollution, nuclear contamination, declining fertility. The novel can be read as an eco-critical warning: environmental degradation creates the conditions for authoritarian responses |
| The God of Small Things | The Meenachal river — polluted, diminished, toxic — is a figure for what globalisation and industrialisation have done to Kerala. The river that once gave life now gives death |
Disability studies examines how physical and mental disability is represented in literature. It challenges:
| Question | Application |
|---|---|
| How is disability represented — as tragedy, as metaphor, as punishment, as inspiration? | Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre: her "madness" is used as a metaphor for repressed female rage, but a disability studies reading would ask whether this reduces mental illness to a literary device |
| Whose perspective is privileged — the disabled character's or the observer's? | In The Handmaid's Tale, the "Unwomen" are disabled by the regime's standards — unfit for reproductive service. The category reveals how disability is socially constructed |
| Does the text challenge or reinforce ableist assumptions? | Blanche DuBois's descent into "madness" is presented as tragedy — but is it also a social judgement? Does the play pathologise her or critique the society that destroys her? |
Queer theory, drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and others, challenges the assumption that heterosexuality is "normal" and all other sexualities are "deviant." It examines:
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