 Hello, and welcome back to NPTEL, National Program on National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning, a joint venture of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science. As you are aware, this program is by we are presently in the lecture series of Language and Literature and the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences offers subjects which are very significant for engineering students. I have been teaching literature at IIT Guwahati for the last 20 years and I hope you will like this lecture on Literature Criticism. We are presently in the module 5 of English Language and Literature titled Literary Criticism and we are at lecture 7. Let us have a recap of what we had done in the previous lectures. In lecture 1, if you remember, we had done the classical literature theory in Europe which was based in Athens about Aristotle, Plato and Socrates and how the discipline of literary criticism began to emerge when poetic and verbal artworks began to be encoded in written form. Verbal artworks does become literature and this in turn led to literary criticism. Socratic method is empirical, what Plato's most significant was his theory of ideas, Plato's disciples Aristotle stated that forms or ideas cannot exist without its phenomenological manifestation. Therefore, we came to learn about the way the literary criticism came into being not only that how to evaluate text, how to evaluate and distinguish between genres, what is a tragic flaw in a tragedy and the conventions that make up a particular literary type. In lecture 2, we had done liberal humanism which can be briefly defined as a grand narrative which emphasizes upon the progress and liberation of humanity from a socialistic perspective. If you remember that they believed in a unity or totality of the system of knowledge where during the 1970s this term came into being and it was valorized as an umbrella of term to refer to a host of literary critics and commentators who are not politically radical and believed in an unchanging fixed condition of human nature. The liberal humanist critic maintained that great literature must possess the power to transcend the barrier of time and space where when we were in lecture 3, we did Marxism and Marxist criticism championed the downtrodden of socio-economic class critiquing texts that assume a classicist society of economic elitism and hegemony which Gromsky had pointed out and championing texts that support the common man. In this century, the Frankfurt schools attack on pop culture as a dehumanizing, aligning prop for a capital state have been influential. In lecture 4, we did feminism, the feminist criticism which champions the downtrodden of the war of the sexes critiquing patriarchal or phallocentric texts and championing neglected pro-woman literary works. Like Marxism, we have seen feminism quite often teams up with post structuralism in his critique of the dominant male hegemony positioning an innate female way of writing, reading even thinking which is the essentialist viewpoint seeing sex or gender as socially conditioned and linguistically constructed as the constructivist brought about. In lecture 5, we did reader response criticism which was a theory of literature associated mainly with Stanley Fish and in a slightly different form Wolfgang Eiser. And the central tenets of varieties of reader response which are many are that meaning is not something that is contained the emphasis upon meaning how it changes within a text or that can be extracted from it and that what a text does is more important than what it is. In module 5 lecture 6, we did the last lecture we had done this was on new historicism and new historicism developed in 80s it was a movement which provided a fresh historical perspective through which a text can be analyzed. The term new historicism was coined by Stephen Greenbelt if you remember the approach of the new historicist was to make a parallel reading of literary and non-literary text that means the historical context also which has to surround the literary text appearing in the same historical epoch to find out ideas that were circulated during the period. Thus this kind of reading enables the critic to give equal weightage to both literary text and the historical period in which it appears. New historicism is political in its approach naturally because of the surrounding historical events and was highly influenced by Marx and then Foucault. Well, so today we are in lecture 7 of module 5 of literary criticism and we are doing eco criticism. Literary studies in a post modern age exist in a state of constant flux when we are approaching literary studies we find that it is in a dynamic state of flux in a period of rapid and sometimes disorienting change. The absence of sign of an environmental perspective in contemporary literary studies this has been a concern for many why we have looked through the different angles at text. And when we do literary criticism we have to remember that literary criticism is a way of interpretation of text how you read the text the different perspectives that you take in evaluating a text or criticizing a text or bringing about theoretical perspective at looking at the text. But when we look at the way data environmental perspectives has been neglected then it becomes concern it becomes a question of concern. So, this absence of sign of an environmental perspective in contemporary literary studies would seem to suggest that despite its revisionist energies which is which has been happening all around scholarship remains academic in the sense of scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world has complete absence even in the 80s we find absence of the perspective through environment looking at text. While related humanities disciplines like history, philosophy, law, sociology and religion have been greening they have taken the environmental turn since the 1970s literary studies have apparently remain unstinted by environmental concern even till 1970 and while social movements like the civil rights and women's liberation movements of the 60s and 70s have transformed literary studies it would appear that the environmental movement of the same era has had little effect. All the critical reading of literary text and movements in relation to ideas of nature, wilderness, natural science and spatial environments have been pursued for the better part of a century. We have seen that they have been concerned about nature about environment, but the term eco criticism or ecological criticism was coined only 20 years ago and in the last decade the study of literature in relation to environment has begun quite suddenly to assume the look of a major critical insurgency. It is very recent times only that we find 20 or odd years that eco criticism has come into being. Eco criticism can be further characterized by distinguishing it from other critical approaches. We had done different critical approaches till now and we have to see that it is different from the way that this approaches be termed. Literary theory in general examines the relations between writers, text and the world. Yes, so we have the text, we have the writer, we have the world. In most literary theory, what is this world? The world is synonymous with society that is the social sphere. Eco criticism expands the notion of the world to include the entire ecosphere. I hope you have got it right. So, this is where it extends from the social sphere from the man made world to the entire ecosphere which is nature. Eco criticism depends upon our willingness as readers to marginalize. If not completely overlooked precisely those aspects and meaning of text that are traditional privilege or valorized. What eco criticism calls for then is a fundamental shift. We have to understand this shift, this paradigm shift from one context of reading to another. Most specifically a movement from the human to the environment. Humanism informed by an awareness of the modern human. This was what was written in Isli. Eco criticism debates nature in order to defend nature. We have to find out this argument where nature is to defend or to look at nature. The term means either the study of nature writing by way of any scholarly approach or conversely the scrutiny of ecological implications and human nature relationship in any literary text even text that seem oblivious of the non-human world. So, we can look into this aspect in different classical texts even Shakespeare's temples can be seen from the eco critical perspective and then we will find that nature that perspective is from the greening of the text as you can say it and it is from the non-human world that we have to evaluate or to interpret the text. Like any recently born thing eco criticism is experiencing tremendous growth and development in this early years of its existence. In the short time since it appeared as a movement some of the initial concerns that mark its inaugural moments have already been answered the after the initial doubts or the misreadings which had which eco criticism had to face. Then we find that it has its own stand now given the veritable explosion of interest in the field. Terrell Glottfeldt is concerned in 1996 with the traditional failure of the literary profession to address green issues for instance now seems something of a non-issue. So, Glottfeldt one of the key figures in this movement had some doubts in the beginning, but now it has become a non-issue. So, this recent acceleration of scholarly activity in the areas of environmental ethics, environmental history, eco feminism and ecotheology provides a clear indication that environmental consciousness which is the subconscious you can call it or the over conscious is increasingly being reflected in both academic discourse and institutional structures. Environmental scholarship therefore, is has finally infiltrated the discipline of literary studies where it variously appears under the rubric of nature writing which many had already written. Words word you take immersion you take a tarot every one of them even tardy. Environmental literature, nature, culture, theory, play studies, eco feminism and a number of other sub-disciplines which may be constellated around the term eco criticism. Eco criticism therefore, calls for a paradigm shift what we had just done now from the human centric to the bio centric to get to the eco centric. Just this feminist criticism examines language we had done in a previous lecture and literature from a gender conscious perspective and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to it is reading of text. Eco criticism takes an earth centred approach to literary studies. So, this is an earth centred approach and it is nature centred approach. Ecological thinking about literature requires us to take the non-human world as seriously as previous modes of criticism have taken to the human realm of society and culture. So, this also calls for a understanding of interdisciplinary approaches of the biological as well as the natural sciences as well as from the standpoint of geography and physical sciences. Glendalf paraphrasing Glotfeldt's point argued in his contribution to the eco criticism reader that race class and gender are worse which we see and hear everywhere at our professional meetings and in a current publication. But the English profession has failed to respond in any significant way to the issue of the environment that was before eco criticism was being introduced as a form of literary criticism. But things are changing the English profession is responding. Glendalf has recently noted that the study of literature now and the environment and the practice of eco criticism has begun to assume an active place in the profession. And as Patrick Murphy had written in 1999 that every department in which MLA members MLA Modern Language Association members whole tenure or to include an eco critic among its ranks. So, let us look at all these different areas which have come into the understanding of literary text. Geography if we look into has always been involved in the analysis of place and this provides the first core concept of eco criticism. Lawrence Buel argues that environmental literature constructs places in a particular way not just by naming objects but by dramatizing in the process how they matter. Place attachment thus becomes a resource in the articulation of environmental unconscious. Let me remind you this that literary theory here is the way that we are looking at the text. When we look at the literary theory of evaluating or interpreting a text we are looking it from the eco critical perspective. But the text does not become an eco critical text. The text is an environmental text. So, I hope you have got a point clear. So, the literary theory or the perspective is the eco critical perspective, but the text does not become an eco critical text it becomes and remains an environmental text. If you look it from the eco critical perspective place like environment encompasses human perception and aspirations as well as the biophysical characteristics that can be measured and monitored. The shape of the earth surface and the processes enacted upon it both physical and human are part of the essence of geography. So, when we go into place studies which is a part of the eco critical domain we see that it can be inferred that places have become fusions of human and natural order and are the significant centers of our immediate experiences of the world. Place refers therefore, both a geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness. So, we have to get this clear it is not only the place the physical space, but it is also the terrain of consciousness all the associations which are connected with the landscape. They are defined by unique location landscape and communities as well as by the focusing of experiences and intentions into particular settings. Places are not abstractions or concepts and with ongoing activities. What then is eco criticism? Simply put therefore, eco criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language. So, we find that this is where we have come into a earth centered approach to literary studies. Eco criticism therefore, expands the notion of the world to include the entire ecosphere and how it plays part in an immensely complex global system. This in accordance with the first law of ecology where everything is connected to everything else. So, we see it is a complete interdependence between one form from the biotic world to the entire ecosphere. Scholars like the term eco criticism over environment because analogous to the science of ecology eco criticism studies relationship between things and the physical world. While environmental suppose criticism it is anthropocentric and dualistic. It is seen from the standpoint of man. Eco in contrast implies interdependent communities, integrated systems and strong connections among constituent parts. I hope you have got the division clear. It is not environmental study. The text may be environmental, but the study or the perspective or the criticism is eco criticism and not environmental criticism. The interplay among characters, species and ecosystems in a literary text often demands an interdisciplinary approach to thoroughly interpret the text as eco text. Now, the green bronze of literary study we are coming to the greening of the humanity, but the taxonomic name of this green bronze of literary studies still being negotiated. Joseph W. Meeker in the comedy of survival studies in literary ecology in 1972 as far back as 1972 introduced the term literary ecology to refer to the study of biological themes and relationship which appear in literary works. If you study John Stainback the American writer Nobel laureate, you find that most of his texts are based on the ecological survival of human beings. It is some simultaneously an attempt to discover what roles have been played by literature in the ecology of the human species. When was this term first coined? It was coined by William Recker in literature and ecology and experiment in eco criticism and essay which appeared in 1978. By eco criticism he meant the application of ecology on ecological concept to the study of literature. Individual studies appeared in a wide I had already referred that there have been individual studies on nature on the environment before and they were categorized under a miscellany of the subject heading such as American studies, regionalism, pastoralism, the furniture, human ecology, science literature, nature in literature, landscape in literature. In this sense its critic was inventing an environmental approach to literature in isolation each was a single voice howling in the wildness, but there was not a discipline as such which would categorize all of them together. I would like to quote here from a Jain scholar where he looks at nature beautifully. Before I had studied Jain for thirty years I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters, but now that I have got its very substance I am addressed for just that I see mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters. So, the entire elemental interdependence of all the world. Well, let us now look into the eco criticism and its antecedents. We must name Ralph Waldo Emerson's nature published in 1836 the first canonical work of US literature to unfold a theory of nature with special reference to poetic. So, this is where a theory the way that you interpret a nature was being laid out. We also have to mention Henry David Toros Walden written almost some years later 1854 has been defined as a work of nature writing. I would advise you to read both this books nature and Walden very interesting books and it will give you great insights into how your landscape and nature is being analyzed and seen and that has been the subject of most literary analysis. Henry David Toros can be considered as the father of eco criticism. Norman Forster's nature in American literature in 1923 inaugurated the new academic field in American literature. In the mid 80s if we come to the mid 80s as scholars began to undertake collaborative projects the field of environmental literary studies was planted in the early 90s it grew. In 1981-89 Elysia Niteschi founded American nature writing newsletter whose purpose was to publish brief essays to the study of writing on nature and environment. In 1990 the University of Nevada Reno this is a very focal point of eco critical studies created the first academic position in literature and the environment. So let us look at interpretation in the eco text. Eco critics are rediscovering early writers just now I had told you that we can read Shakespeare. We can read again different text by the classical writers and we can see it from the eco critical perspective re-reading the classics from a green perspective and beginning to frame the subject in a theoretical way. One of the prime concerns of the eco critics is to redirect human consciousness to a full consideration of its place in a threatened natural world. Eco critics need contact not just with literature, literature has to be there it is the base text you cannot just go and expand yourself into the natural sciences. But you are looking at the literature or a text or a literary text from the perspective of the natural sciences from the physical environmental sciences etcetera. Eco critics should tell stories should use narrative as a constant or intermittent strategy for literary analysis to illuminate and appreciate the context of reading that is to embrace the literary text as language that somehow contributes to our lives out in the world. This is what Scott's logic one of the great pioneers of eco criticism has stated. Eco criticism is therefore is as someone said an unfortunate term or server had said that because it suggests a new kind of critical theory and it encompasses so many disciplines. The emerging body of work that might be labeled eco critical is united not by a theory, but by a focus which is the environment. This eco critical work draws in a variety of story theories such as feminist Marxist post structurally psychoanalytic and historicist. Well, so let us look at this painting. This was a painting which had inspired a lecture at Oxford by John Ruskin in 1877. Going back where holding this 1832 Turner painting, painting by Turner of a pastoral Leicester aloft in front of his students Ruskin a great champion of Turner's work declared. So, he looked at this painting and he said you if you like may go to Leicester to see what it is like now. I never shall, but I can make a pretty good guess. So, it might be not in his pastoral landscape that what you can see, but later it might be the rise of industrialization may destroy this painting of this pastoral scene of Leicester. So, that great outburst against modern times this lecture at Oxford by John Ruskin he with that he picked up a paint brush on the glass his desk in a beautiful bridge over the original stepping stones and a cluster of ugly houses in a field. Then he painted the river and indigo color to signify pollution from nearby factories. With a final flourish he added great clouds of smoke across the sky and announced that most fair is supplied thus. So, this was a beautiful lecture by Ruskin how he wanted to show how a painting also could become the inspiration for the changes in the climate. The eco critics legacy therefore, if we go into that English eco critics believed that a legacy goes back to John Ruskin modern painters what he had written over there. Words words prefaced to lyrical ballads which was a document on how to write poetry and how what would be the themes of poetic expression. The writings of Wordsworth Coleridge all of this are the romantic John Clay, Edward Carpenter, William Morris helped inspire the establishment of an array of environmental societies. This was during the 19th century and you have to remember the 19th century the romantic era of English literature in the late 19th century who wish to turn to England from the grimy backward of industrialization into a garden. So, while we are going into eco fictions legacy we see that this interplay of the human and non-human illiterate texts there are ecosystematic relations with wilderness, cityscapes, mountains, riverscapes in the fiction of Thomas Hardy. If we come to the Victorians we have the modern Joseph Conrad, we have Virginia Woolf, we have D. H. Lawrence, Walt Whitman famous American poet, Mark Twain, Carmen Malville all these are the American icons, Jack London who was known for his search for the essential nature and self. John Stainback we had just mentioned Ernest Hemingway the old man on the sea and John Muir. In post-colonial literature we have here Snipehole, we have Chenua Hibbe, Nigerian writer, we have our very own Arun to Tiroi, we have Arkin Arayan who had brought about these relationships between man nature and the conflict that arises out of it. The waves of criticism now if we look into the eco criticism it had two ways of looking at the text. For the first wave eco criticism environment effectively meant natural environment. Eco criticism was initially understood to be synchronous with the aims of earth care. Its goal was to contribute to the struggle to preserve the biotic community. In the process the eco critic might seek to redefine the concept of culture itself in organicist terms. So, this was the first wave of eco criticism. Second wave criticism of course, expanded its domain and tended to question organicist models of conceiving both environment and environmentalism. Literature and environment studies must develop a social eco criticism that takes urban and degraded landscape just as seriously as natural landscapes. Second wave eco criticism has so far concentrated strongly for example, on locating vestiges of nature within cities and our exposing crimes of eco injustice against society's marginal groups. Let us look at the literature review overview of eco literature. We have to mention again Rachel Carson silent spring in 1999 agreed that modern environmentalism begins with her book and widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement. We have Leo Marx the machine in the garden. This is a very very seminal book technology and the pastoral ideal in American culture. The Joseph W. Meeker the comedy of survival Raymond Williams the country in the city in 1985 one of the most outstanding books on environmental study, but it was in early 1990s that the first wave of eco criticism proper was launched. We have this green this main key players Jonathan Bate when he wrote romantic ecology Wordsworth and the environmental tradition. We have Lawrence Buel the environmental imagination, thorough nature writing and the formation of American culture. Then Buel's approach however was to avoid the complexities of theory entirely and seems and to bridge the gap between what he does in fact acknowledge as a theoretical problem the relationship between text on the one hand and the world on the other. He calls this bridge that this relationship between the text and the world on the other. He calls it the aesthetics of dual accountability which will satisfy the mind and ethological facts. One of the ground works which was done was by Sheryl Glott-Felty we had already mentioned her in the previous slides and in her eco criticism read all and Marx in literary ecology which appeared in 1996. He was the first general reader in it was the book which was the first general reader in eco criticism and is invaluable in providing a background to the emergence of this area and an outline of his concerns in a range of essays from the late 1980s and the early 90s. We have to mention our carriage and Semmel's writing of environment Lauren Scoop, then Jonathan Bate, Greg Gerrard eco criticism which all appeared in the following years. We must also mention again Usley in MLA. Usley is the association for the study of literature and environment which is a professional association that started in America in 1992 and it had its very unique place in MLA Modern Language Association, the premier association of all literary studies. Eco criticism officially arrived at the Modern Language Association conference on December 29, 1998. So, it was given its formal acceptance. Usley's mission was to promote the exchange of ideas and information pertaining to literature that considers the relationship between human beings and the natural world and to encourage new nature writing traditional and innovative scholarly approaches to environmental literature, interdisciplinary environmental research. It can be knowledge systems which exist and once idea of how one reacts to environment which may be in different countries, may be in different myths, in different parables and also in alternate knowledge system. Usley is at the annual meeting of the western that is the journal which is being published by Usley. Usley was formed with Scott Slavic elected first president and Patrick Moffey established a new journal Usley, interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment. If you look in the online you will find that the articles which are written on this are very rewarding. You can look into every sphere of environmental studies through this articles. So, this became a forum for critical studies of the literary and performing arts proceeding from an addressing environmental considerations. Let me quote here what Scott Slavic had also referred to Walt Whitman's song of myself, I am large I contain multitudes. I am large I contain multitudes, Walt Whitman's words. Eco criticism is large it contains multitudes. This is what Scott Slavic had also mentioned in his definition of eco criticism. There is no single dominant worldview guiding eco critical practice rather it is the study of explicitly environmental texts by way of any scholarly approach or conversely the scrutiny of ecological implications and human nature relation in any literary texts. I hope this is clear enough for you. This is what Scott Slavic had referred to and when he had referred to I am large I contain multitudes of Walt Whitman's poem. Well, while we are looking at eco criticism, we are looking into place as a central object of criticism. Make a central object because of critical literary critical interest of ancient lineage is receiving renewed interest. Every place therefore, we have to see is particular there are multiple kinds of places which overlap and blur into each other. I am just taking one perspective from this eco critical theory so that you find it a clear that how we are proceeding. When we look at place if we see it from place then places are characterized by the physical and human properties. The characteristic includes not only climate, landforms, soils, hydrology, vegetation and animal life and the human characteristic include language, religion which also influences place, political systems, economic systems, population distribution and quality of life which was the environmental unconscious which we had already referred to. Places change over time as both physical and human processes operate to modify earth surface. The term therefore, place does not necessarily have the same implications or meanings in the different disciplines. It is generally agreed that the study of geography has at its core the understanding of place. However, what they do not achieve is a deep holistic appreciation of place as it is currently understood in geographical thinking. Other terms that cross pollinate through place are when we are looking it from the perspective from the domain of place. Let us see what are the other things which go into the understanding of place in a text. There is home, there is dwelling, there is milieu, territory, regions, states, cities, neighborhoods, rural areas, wilderness, uninhabited areas and above all space. So, landscape we will have to see as sense skip. Landscape can be seen only through the eye, place as a physical form that is landscape. Landscape is often understood as a panoramic view or a scenery. Landscape is always a kind of sense skip. Edward S. K. C. points out that fact that unlike places, landscapes are seldom named. What makes the experience of place different from that of landscape is the concept of time and the act of memory associated with the former. Landscape and place can undergo significant changes, but the place stays consistent not place. Body and landscape are the boundaries of place. Body is the inner boundary and landscape is the outer one. Place is what takes place between body and landscape. Well, while place has often been conceptualized as some kind of definable bounded space, geographers have been keen to show how the spatial characteristics of place are highly nuanced. A place is a socially millingful and identifiable space to which a historical dimension is attributed. Space is on the other hand here not merely as place, but a place inhabited and animated by network of social relations and practices. So, this is quite the division is quite clear. In this sense, the focus is not on space as a physical entity with quantitative properties, but on topological space that draws attention to its qualitative properties. So, it is the qualitative not the quantitative properties which makes it more of a discipline. Its constitutive elements which are its connections, its convergences, its continuities, its discontinuities which incorporates the dimensions of time of change and history. This is very interesting. Now, how do we see humans? We are seeing us not as a part of an observer looking at the text, but as a part of the ecological atmosphere. Studying the human and place as non-human dynamics, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question because the word ecology treats humans as biota as integral parts of ecological system. So, you are a part of the biota. A person or a human being is a part of the ecological system. It is not a part from the ecological system. The word ecological also has the benefit of conveying the masses that the subject is not going to involve extending moral considerably from humans out into the environment. So, therefore, human beings, beasts, plants all fall in the same category and other creations interlate and interdependent on a process of self-organization that generates systems and organisms, all of which are within the constraints of and constitute components of larger systems such as major ecosystems or the water cycle in the biosphere. If you read Steinbeck's novels, you will find that he was influenced by marine biology and when he looked into the way that man tried to survive in the entire struggle for existence, it was very much related to the way that species and animal life survived in the under, I mean in the marine world. If we look at place literature overview, we have always to refer to Edward Cassie the fate of place and Steinbeck as I had told you. So, many people had written about place. We have a very new book which had come out not very new, very recent Kate Rigby's topographies of the sacred, the Poetics of Place in European Romanticism. Beautiful book where place is the conditioning factor for the inspiration of all the poets especially in the romantic period. Well, so let us now give you two examples, how to apply eco-critical reading to a text. Let us look at one Chinese writer, Soul Mountain and Indian writer Kiran Desai, the inheritance of laws in seeing how this text can be seen from the eco-critical perspective. This two Asian laureates, Gauzin Jiang, he was a noble laureate and how he had gone to in Soul Mountain. It is a record of his introspective journey in the early 80s into the remote mountains and ancient forests of see Suwaseen in Southeast Asia. While Kiran Desai, which many of you may be familiar with with her Booker Prize novel, The Inheritance of Laws, is a story set in the mid 1980s and especially in Kalingpong and Himalayan town by the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga and also in New York City. So, the rural and the urban are being put side by side and both in different cultural zones. Soul Mountain, when we look into this book, we find that there is different sort of an integration of natural resources as well as the natural landscape in the understanding of the self. By incorporating his theories of holistic thought and the environment into his writing, Jin Jiang created his own eco-fiction, the fiction with an environmental subtext. It is very interesting because now you can go into the different knowledge systems of the Chinese, the Taoist systems, the different Chinese wisdoms which goes into the making of the text. Critics have focused on Soul Mountain as an autobiographical novel, but it is mostly a depiction of the story of a wandering man who takes 15,000 kilometers journey in search of the self and his relation to the collective. When we look at the inheritance of laws, we find that the human culture is connected to the physical world affecting it and affected by it. We find that characters almost take on the biological or almost physical representatives of the animal world and the non-human environment is present not merely as a framing device in her novel, but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history. The themes of violence, decay, degradation, cruelty in nature and nature formed the crux of these two novels. What we are trying to see in these two novels is that even though eco-criticism is very much an American, it had come out as a source from American scholars, we are trying to show that it has also an East Asian legacy. Even a quick survey of current eco-critical scholarship reveals that ecological literary criticism is almost the limited province of American and British literature scholars. The attempt of our study here would be to explore this misinterpretation and show that eco-critical legacy also has diverse East Asian roots in traditional thought system and folk parables. If you look into the Vedic systems of how nature is being looked, how the human component, the biotic world is being characterized. If you read Raja Rao's The Sapendanda Rope, you will find that this exchange between the human and the natural, this connection between what we have with each other is beautifully seen in the traditional knowledge systems. Primarily to interpret the novels through natural sciences and the vital truth from laws of nature, the human ideal is to understand the Tao. If we look at the soul mountain, we will find that Taoism is somehow influencing a very old knowledge system, how you look at nature. Primarily to understand the Tao and act in harmony with it, this view of nature can appropriately be called organic for various reasons. All things including rocks and water have vitality called in Chinese key literally the breath. In Chinese they have this division between the yin and the yang, which is the male and the female and we find that this is a harmonious exchange between two forms. Each phenomena has an individual nature and this consists not of some essence but of a distinctive D, which is the power and sense, the spirit and pattern of growth. All phenomena are organically related and the world is one continuous field of key with each phenomena not a separate entity. So, we see that he reflects in soul mountain, if we look it from the eco critical perspective, then we found we find that soul mountain reflects all these aspects in the way that the writer has presented the landscape. In soul mountain, Gao reflects Taoist religious cosmology that seeks the transformation of the individual as a celestial being, who is fully translucent to the cosmic environment in which he or she is situated. It is based on the Taoist doctrine Yin Yang, Yin is the female, Yang is the male and according to Taoist tradition everything consists of this balance, it is what constitutes reality. This production of Yin from Yang and Yang from Yin occurs in a cyclical motion and is continuous, there is no factor of life to which the activities of Yin and Yang do not apply. Both the novels are set in the early 80s, we find it goes from the terrain of the urban to the rural under the aftermath of your political revolution. We can examine it from this different domains, they focus on the behavioural and experiential aspects of ecological interrelationships, they also give viable alternatives to thinking and reconstituting environmental ideas, addresses the ecological strategy of constructing the selected novels as environmental texts. Well, so let us take in three dimensional place by study, the role of place of landscape of lives grounded in an awareness of the physical location, geographical, biological as well as nature-human relationship. If we look into the dwellings, if we look into the aesthetics which are involved of nature, if we look into the neighborhood, we find that they are open areas which are ready for analysis and if we trace the precise ecological representation of biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem, how the plants are being represented, how the beings or the flora and fauna and everything has been shown, you find that it is an organic harmonious whole, may be sometimes not harmonious, but sometimes you find that ambiguity is also present, contradictions are also present and this is a part of the ecological realities of the surrounding landscape. Let us now see how eco-criticism is closely linked with eco-feminism. Eco-feminists argue that a relationship exists between oppression of women and the degradation of nature and to explore the intersectionality between sexism, the nomination of nature, racism and speciesism. Darwin's careful dramatization of the human as animal and his theories of descent and survival of the fittest govern the sociological naturalism in the two novels. If we look into that, I had mentioned you the way that they evolved from the animal or may be to the human from the human again going backwards towards the animal and to identify how physical words owe this complex organization to the same process of natural selection. So, let us see how the visual landscape of soul mountain was shaped by the exotic nature in a state of uncontaminated pristine glory. He goes inner and inner towards the forest, mountainous terrain, river and wilderness and he finds sometimes how people are shooting bears and even pandas, trees are being cut down and it is a literal response to the devastation caused by the industrialization caused by cultural revolution whatever and deforestation destruction of habitat. While the ecology in Kiran Desai's novel, the Himalayas and snow we find seasons, the spring, the summer all contributes to the narratives, fullest significance and attempts to understand how the mountains around Kalingpong assume their present form as well as what it might mean to identify with such a place on earth. So, when you read this novel not from the sociological point of view or from their philosophical or realistic point of view from the eco critical perspective it takes on a different form altogether it is a image which is very different and there is something which is connected with the mystic of the land this is something very closely connected with eco criticism. Eco criticism has room for myths has room for deep knowledge system which is called the deep ecology. There is a sense throughout that cow is searching for some mythical land he calls a soul mountain as we have seen the sense of place and embeddedness with something which had gone before all the people with the associations of history makes a lot of meaning to the land. Soul mountain abounds with therefore ancient Chinese myths belief systems derived from eastern religions and philosophy such as Taoism as well as Buddhism history folk songs and memory. The folk songs make a lot of contribution to the understanding of this novels in Desai's novels you find that the characters are shown almost in organic forms are subject to sense through interaction with the environmental influences. I propose to show how Desai incorporates evolutionary ideas in the representation of the causal factors that have made the characters inevitably what they are. There is therefore careful dramatization in both the two novels of humanist animal a relationship of a reciprocity between the biological and the social therefore this is not an anthropocentric way of looking at it but it is almost that you are a part of the biota you are a part of the ecological system. The special environment everyday life the secret and the brain also you can look into it how it is controlled inhabited eroded displayed by special issues and ever changing nature of location special issues such as environmental degradation border conflicts influence both the novels. So, let us discuss now coming to the end of this what are the issues that we can look at while we are doing eco criticism as literary theory as literary criticism the issues raised are what are the precise relationship between narrative and the environment. How is the environment represented in the selected fictions and what can we inherit from this representation suppose you take up one text and we have to see how environment or the ecosystem is being represented. You can take insights from the biological sciences from natural sciences from the physical sciences because eco criticism covers all and it is it covers multitudes as Walt Whitman had said what is it that connects humans and dwelling places including forest mountains rivers and streams there are places which are sacred there are places which are profane there are no places there are places where you have connections with memory. Are folk tales meets oral histories ballots and ordinary events of daily life all involved in the special positioning of a place do you agree with that yes very much so folk tales sometimes give you more insights into what a place is the connection with a place than any other source. Do ecological representation in fiction differ from cultural representations which we had done before as a cultural study or a Marxist study or from the feminist perspective or from the classical viewpoint of how you read the text or does the ecological lie beyond the limit of representation or do you think that it does not fall in this representation or at all that it has no place at all in the perspective of reading a text. Can ecological studies largely be considered part of the tradition of humanism if the ecological by definition names and engagement with the non human because it has the engagement with the non human yet the non human also includes the human as biota and does it have a different form of humanism and can we call it a tradition of humanism or future humanism if you want to term it as so or is it no longer possible to separate the human from the ecological. So, the references are from Jonathan Bate the song of the earth Lawrence Boyle, Rachel Carson, Edward S. Cassie the fate of place then we have Lawrence Coop another great writer green studies reader from romanticism to ecoticism I have mentioned here Ernest Hemingway's the old man and the sea Kiran Desai's the inheritance inheritance of laws Greg Gerard's ecocriticism Cyril Gottfeldt we have already mentioned this who is a key figure here J.D. Krishnamurti on nature and the environment beautiful as is which he has written about the essential response to nature and as moralist nature and human nature literature ecology and meaning Arnene's who brought out deep ecology the meaning of deep ecology which was connected with the understanding of the myths and parables and alternate knowledge systems and Eugene Odin then we have John Steinbeck's the grip of wrought my son Manso many books that he had written which you can see it from that side Raymond Williams the country and the city and Gaujin John's soul mountain electronic sources which you can get on ecocriticism from the net and let me quote and end my lecture on ecocriticism from a quotation from Gaujin Jain man follows earth earth follows sky sky follows the way and the way follows nature. Thanks.