ECOCRITICISM & ANIMAL STUDIES

Question 1

‘a worldwide emergent
movement’

Answer 1

ecocriticism

Question 2

The term ecocriticism was first coined by _____________

Answer 2

William Rueckert

Question 3

oikos (eco) means

Answer 3

household or earth

Question 4

logy means

Answer 4

logical discourse

Question 5

what does ecocriticism mean

Answer 5

criticism of the environment as represented by literature

Question 6

defines ecocriticism “as a study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist’s practice.”

Answer 6

Lawrence Buell

Question 7

defines ecocriticism as “criticism that
arises from and is oriented toward a concern with human and nonhuman interaction and interrelationship”

Answer 7

Patrick D. Murphy

Question 8

a relatively new interdisciplinary field that calls attention to the accelerating exploitation of animals in the period of industrial modernity and questions what is possible to know about animals’ own experiences.

Answer 8

animal studies

Question 9

a foundational text in Animal Studies within the fields of literature questions surrounding the ontology of non-human animal, the ethics of animal slaughter and the difference between humans and other animals

Answer 9

The Animal That Therefore I am by Jacques Derrida
(2002)

Question 10

what are the critic’s tasks in when analyzing using ecocriticism

(esa ee)

Answer 10

• emphasis on eco-consciousness removing the ego conscious man
• seeking vestiges of nature in cities (exposing crimes of eco-injustice)
• analzyes the principles and customs of society in relation to nature (how culture devalues and degrades the natural world)
• explores the complex interrelationships between the human and the non-human (antropocentric to biocentric)
• emphasizes that nature is not subordinate but a co-inhabitant or even exists beyond man

Question 11

what are the critic’s tasks in when analyzing texts using animal studies

Answer 11

• catalogues and deconstructs the reductive ways to treat non-human animals
• questions animals titular role to minimal presence (occasional, tired animal metaphor to absent referent)
• challenges representation of animal or animal part as instrument for the use of humans
• questions the radically reduced presentation although given with a name (the animal is absent, replaced by a human with fur)
• depicts animal as an individual with some measure of autonomy, agency, voice, character, and as a member of a species with a nature that has certain typical capabilities and limitations

Question 12

examines the evolution of main relationships with animals and how they went form muses for the very first human art to project a 19th century attitude backwards across the millenia

Answer 12

why look at animals by john berger