Ecological Footprints in Literature: An Excursion into Selected Nature Writings and Nature Novels

The book provides a comprehensive view of the environmental discourses that are found in the literary representations of the natural world. The book presents an in-depth analysis of the symbolic manifestations of the outer world in various genres of literature such as nature novels and nature or ecological writings. It deeply captures the mutual interactions that occur between the human and the non-human world that tend to influence each other’s actions and processes.

By exploring the ecocritical leanings and tracing all the phases of Anthropocene, the book takes its readers for a deep excursion into the beauteous, dynamic, natural, and overtly spiritual world of Nature as exhibited in the writings such as Thoreau’s Walden, Khushwant Singh’s Nature Watch, and Starhawk’s The Earth Path which is contrasted against the eco-catastrophic world of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. An insightful and analytical journey into the world of more unique portrayals of the ecological world that tend to strike a balance between two distinct worlds: the real and the imaginative, the spiritual and the material as well as the natural and the man-made (as reflected in the nature novels: George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, Khushwant Singh’s I Shall not Hear the Nightingale, Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing, and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia: A Novel. The book, thus, with its underpinning wisdom will be an interesting and more enlightening read for the critics, academicians, and researchers.

Dr. Archana R. Kadiyan, is an academician, an eco-critic and an aspiring writer. She has done her MA and doctorate in English from the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India. Her PhD thesis entitled “Ecological Footprints in Literature: An Excursion through Selected Nature Writings and Nature Novels” is an eco-oriented research in the field of literature, environment and sustainability. She is presently working as an Assistant Professor cum Course Coordinator (English) at Amity University Online (ADDOE), Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Formerly, she was associated with various institutions, as Assistant Professor in English: SRM University, Delhi-NCR, Sonepat, Haryana (India), Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar National Law University, Sonipat, Haryana (India), Amity University, Gurugram, Haryana (India), D.A.V. Centenary College, Faridabad, and Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak (Haryana).