Environmental criticism is a relatively new discipline that brings the global problem of environmental crisis to the forefront of literary and cultural studies. This 2011 introduction defines what ecocriticism is and provides a set of conceptual tools to encourage students to look at the texts they're reading in a new way.

Preface; Introduction: the challenge; Part I. Romantic and Anti-Romantic: 1. Old World Romanticism; 2. New World Romanticism; 3. Genre and the ethics of nonfiction; 4. Language beyond the human?; 5. The inherent violence of Western thought?; 6. Posthumanism and the 'end of nature'; Part II. The Boundaries of the Political: 7. Thinking like a mountain?; 8. Environmental justice and the move 'beyond nature writing'; 9. European eco-justice; 10. Liberalism and Green moralism; 11. Ecofeminism; 12. 'Postcolonial' eco-justice; 13. Questions of scale: the local, the national and the global; Part III. Science and the Struggle for Intellectual Authority: 14. Science and the crisis of authority; 15. Science studies; 16. Evolutionary theories of literature; 17. Interdisciplinarity and science: two essays on human evolution; Part IV. The Animal Mirror: 18. Ethics and the nonhuman animal; 19. Anthropomorphism; 20. The future of ecocriticism; Further reading; Index.

'The challenge Clark faces comes [from] ... the assertion that literary studies can make a significant contribution to the rapidly evolving ecological debate ... This challenge makes the depth and breadth of Clark's penetrating survey all the more impressive.' The Times Literary Supplement'Clark guides the student reader to ask good, difficult questions of environmental justice, eco-postcolonial criticism, and phenomenology. I must pronounce [his] book an outstanding introduction to ecocriticism.' Greg Garrard, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment'In this superb book, Timothy Clark has achieved what the best introductions for students achieve: brief, accurate and readable summaries of the main positions in a field, combined with a series of provocative and stimulating questions to be explored in class. Clark has done this and more - he has written a book that any ecocritic should read.' Richard Kerridge, Green Letters'Far from a pedestrian college textbook, Clark's Introduction to Literature and the Environment is an erudite survey of ecocriticsm accessible to both scholar and student, as well as a practical tool for demonstrating literature's representation of and engagement with environmental issues of all kinds ... I can think of no better intellectual map of ecocriticism's present state or future prospects than this book.' Modern Philology