Environments: from nature writing to climate fiction

Introduction

The theme "Environments" invites us to study how English-speaking literature and arts represent the relationship between human beings and the natural world — from the celebration of wilderness in Romantic and American nature writing to the anxieties of contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi).

1. Key notions

• Environment: the physical surroundings we live in, but also the cultural way we perceive them.
• Wilderness: untouched nature, a founding myth of American culture.
• Nature writing: non-fiction prose combining precise observation, personal experience and ethical reflection.
• Ecocriticism: the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment (Cheryll Glotfelty, 1990s).
• Anthropocene: the proposed geological epoch in which human activity is the dominant force shaping the planet.
• Cli-fi: fiction whose plot is driven by climate change and its consequences.

2. Romantic roots (late 18th – 19th century)

British Romantic poets react against industrialisation. William Wordsworth (Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798; I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) presents landscape as a moral and emotional teacher. John Keats and Percy B. Shelley explore the sublime — nature as beautiful and terrifying. William Blake denounces the "dark Satanic Mills" of early industry.

This tradition establishes a lasting idea: nature restores what modern life damages.

3. American nature writing

Author	Work	Contribution
Henry D. Thoreau	Walden (1854)	voluntary simplicity, self-reliance, close observation
John Muir	My First Summer in the Sierra (1911)	wilderness preservation, national parks
Aldo Leopold	A Sand County Almanac (1949)	the "land ethic": humans as members, not conquerors, of the biotic community
Rachel Carson	Silent Spring (1962)	pesticides and DDT; launches modern environmentalism
Annie Dillard	Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)	attention, wonder, spiritual observation

Rachel Carson is a turning point: her book led to public debate on chemical pollution and contributed to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (1970). It shows how writing can produce political change.

4. Environmental justice and other voices

Nature writing has long been criticised for being white, male and rural. Contemporary writers broaden the picture:

• Indigenous perspectives: Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass, 2013) combines Potawatomi knowledge and botany, replacing ownership with reciprocity.
• Urban and postcolonial environments: Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement, 2016) argues that the realist novel is badly equipped to represent climate catastrophe.
• Environmental racism: pollution and climate risks affect poorer and minority communities first — a central concern of the environmental justice movement.

5. Climate fiction

• Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003) and the MaddAddam trilogy: genetic engineering, corporate power, collapse.
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006): post-apocalyptic ash-covered world, survival and love.
• Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140 (2017), The Ministry for the Future (2020): sea-level rise, but also political and economic solutions — "hopepunk" rather than despair.
• Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018): trees as characters and a plea for a longer timescale.
• Film and media: Wall-E (2008), Don't Look Up (2021), documentaries by David Attenborough.

Two dominant modes emerge: the dystopian warning ("if nothing changes…") and the narrative of resilience (adaptation, community, repair).

6. Useful language for the oral exam

• global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprint, biodiversity loss, offsetting, sustainability
• to raise awareness, to advocate, to mitigate, to adapt, to phase out, to preserve
• eco-anxiety, greenwashing, tipping point, resilience, stewardship
• Structures: The author draws attention to…, This raises the issue of…, Whereas earlier writers celebrated…, contemporary authors question…

À retenir

• Romantic poetry and American nature writing build the idea of nature as moral resource; Silent Spring turns it into political action.
• Ecocriticism and environmental justice question who speaks for nature.
• Cli-fi shifts the focus from admiration to consequences, oscillating between dystopia and resilience.