AS YOU LIKE IT : AN EVALUATION AS GREEN STUDIES

Abstract

Ecocriticism: Ecocriticism is a recent trend in the field of criticism which emerged in late 1980s in the western American Universities .But the history of the emergence of the ecocriticism goes back to the meeting of Western Literary Association which was held in 1970s where ecocriticism first emerged as a concept. Simply defined, “ecocriticism is a study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment’’ (Cheryll Glotfelty and Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in the Literary Ecology, XVIII). In the USA, the acknowledged founder is Cheryll Goltfelty whose collection of essays entitled “The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in the Literary Ecology” is a key collection of essays which inaugurated the study of literature from the environmental or ecocriticical perspective, alternatively known as. Further, the term ‘ecocriticism’ is derived from or is the combination of criticism and a shortened form of ‘ecology-a science that investigates the inter –relations between the plants and animal life with their physical habitats.