Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) has been analyzed repeatedly by scholars, most often through the methodologies of formalism and psychology loosely defined. However, Cézanne has never been considered through the methodology of ecocriticism. In this thesis I analyze Cézanne through an ecocritical lens, arguing that Cézanne's landscape paintings of Aix-en-Provence and the nearby coastal village of l'Estaque form a bioregional picture of his native environment, or bioregion, of Provence, while also arguing that Cézanne was environmentally aware. In analyzing the bioregional elements of Cézanne's landscape paintings, I explore subjects including the artist's biography and his friend Émile Zola's (1840-1902) environmental writings, ecocritical scholarship and art history's relationship with it, environmental history in Provence, and photography.

The planetary crisis is a factor with undoubted effects on society. Education in Sweden concerns itself with preparing students for societal life through passing on values and emphasising the need for critical thinking. Many students today engage in environmental activism with the agenda to demand change from governing bodies to mitigate climate change. To understand the process of change, additional information is needed regarding what it means to be human. This text concerns itself with environmental teaching for the EFL-setting. Through focusing on literature, and contributing to an in-depth understanding of the characters, increased awareness about what it means to be human can be achieved. By selecting the short story “Bears Discover Fire,” it is illustrated how such an understanding can be found through fictional works. This paper covers an ecocritical reading focusing on how representation, relationship, and structures detrimental for the climate figure in Terry Bisson’s story. In addition, it argues that a deeper understanding of the characters results from applying the biophilia hypothesis. The findings from the analysis of characters and the representation of nature and relationships are applied to the EFL-setting, providing examples for how teaching can be conducted to promote further activism and strengthen the relationship between students and nature.

Ekokritik är ett relativt outforskat område i skolan, men blir alltmer relevant med tanke på klimatnödläget. Studiens syfte är därför att undersöka den didaktiska potentialen med ekokritik i gymnasieskolans svenskundervisning samt utreda i vilken utsträckning det finns märkbara ekokritiska teman i Selma Lagerlöfs novell “En historia från Halland”. I vår studie låter vi elever analysera novellen utifrån ekokritiska frågeställningar. Langers (2011) teori om föreställningsvärldar och de tillhörande fem faserna appliceras i utformandet av metoden. I resultatet åskådliggör vi sedan var eleverna befinner sig i sina analyser och hur de tillämpar Langers faser (2011). Vi utgår från den hermeneutiska forskningstraditionen och tolkar elevernas reception av novellen. Resultatet visar att det finns ekokritiska teman i “En historia från Halland” då den skildrar människans relation till naturen. Dessutom kan vi se att det finns didaktisk potential med ekokritik i gymnasieskolan.

(in English): In this diploma thesis I am dealing with Czech (and by extension Slovak) environmental poetry. Particularly in Anglo-Saxon world, the environmental poetry (poetry that reacts on the current environmental situation) is well-established. This type of poetry has emerged just few years ago in Czech literary scene, and is still waiting for its stable position. One of the main reasons why this type of poetry emerged in Czech literary scene was a call přírodnílyrika.cz from 2019. It created a literary momentum and started a debate whether poets should thematize contemporary problems. Even though the poetry collections seem distinct and diverse, they have some common elements. This diploma thesis is mapping these environmental poetry collections and contextualizing them into wider poetry history.

In this bachelor’s essay, I examine the importance of place in Marguerite Duras’ The Lover from 1984. By using an ecocritical approach I find that the concepts of “culture” and “nature”, or “human” and “environment”, are made undistinguished. I also find that colonialism is highly present, and the novel accords to the theories of the overlapping literary fields of ecocriticism and postcolonialism. Ecocritical postcolonialism maintains that non-white people have historically been likened to animals and thus have a similar relationship with colonisers as humans have with the non-human. In addition, I apply Michail Bachtin’s concept of the chronotope to the novel and conclude that the Mekong River, the Cholen district, the mother’s home, the desert, and France are the most significant chronotopes. They all represent time in some way – usually in the form of cultural history or the protagonist’s lifetime – and each one plays into the novel’s overarching views of colonialism and nature.

This essay explores the topic of appropriation of nature and the resulting social alienation it imparts on several of the novel’s characters: Frankenstein, Walton, and the Creature. The Creature serves as a personification of both industrialism and urban atomization. His depiction as such follows Marxist critic Warren Montag’s argument that the novel renders the Creature more horrible through the suppression of modernity which makes him the embodiment of industrialism, and Frank Moretti’s claim that the novel favors pastoral, pre-industrial ideals (Montag, Moretti). Frankenstein’s materialist approach to science provides the driving force for this alienation and is informed by both mechanist philosophy (Hogsette) and a desire to remodel nature in accordance with human desire (Mellor). Rather than bringing prosperity, those endeavors alienate Frankenstein from his surrounding in a Marxian line of thought, and Frankenstein himself comes to resemble Bill Hughes’s concept of the negative version of Prometheus who loses himself in his materialist pursuits (Hughes). Drawing upon early German Romantic ideas of reconciliation with nature outlined by Alison Stone, this essay argues that much of the chaos in Frankenstein stems from anthropocentrism that is rooted in Hegelian philosophy and that a healthier solution to this view is proposed by early German Romantic organicism.

This essay examines cloud depictions made by the Swedish artist Charlotte Wahlström (1849–1924) during the turn of the twentieth century. The purpose of the essay is to increase the knowledge of the works of a relatively unexplored female artist and discuss how an ecocritical perspective can bring new light to landscape painting during this period of time. The material consists of a selection of six landscape paintings with cloud motifs displayed at the exhibition Kvinnliga pionjärer – Visionära landskap at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm. The analysis is based on formal aspects from Allan Ellenius’ scheme for image analysis combined with an ecocritical theoretical approach, which puts the cloud paintings in an Anthropocentric context. By painting, Wahlström positions herself to the clouds, which reflects the relation between human and nature. Wahlström’s cloud paintings tend to be seen as subjective mood paintings, on which human feelings are reflected, regardless of the stylistic depiction of the clouds. The result shows that an ecocritical focus enables an image analysis that puts the clouds and the nature in focus, free from human’s projection of her own feelings. Ecocriticism cannot, however, see beyond the fact that a painting is an artefact made by and regarded by humans, and in turn always subjective.

This thesis conducts a comparative and ecocritical examination of Blackfish and Grizzly Man, two nature documentary films dealing with separate cases of human fatalities caused by wild animals. The aim was to show how nature and non-human animals as well as the relationship between humans/civilization and non-human animals/nature are represented in the films. Additionally, the effects of the representations of non-human animals on a viewer are also examined. For examining representations, the main theoretical frameworks used were: Frans De Waal’s understanding of the concepts of animalcentric and anthropocentric anthropomorphism, and Hillevi Ganetz’s understanding and use of the concept of natursyn (english: view on nature), meaning cultural interpretations of nature, which divides into three views: beautiful, sublime and picturesque. For the additional aim, the concepts of trans-species empathy and false-intimacy were used, the former via Alexa Weik von Mossner’s understanding and use, the latter via Derek Bousé’s. Essentially, the related concepts refer to the human ability to engage emotionally with non-human characters.  What the results show is that both Grizzly Man and Blackfish have ambivalent attitudes toward nature. In both Grizzly Man and Blackfish there are signs of different kinds of anthropomorphism. In terms of natursyn, Grizzly Man consists of a picturesque and a sublime view, articulated verbally and visually, whereas Blackfish consists of a beautiful and a picturesque view, articulated verbally, visually and sonically. The thesis also shows that the representations of orcas as human-like and close-ups of orcas with physical injuries in Blackfish have the potential of creating trans-species empathy. In Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s indifferent conception of nature, proclaimed through spoken narration as close-ups of a bear face are shown, discourages the potential effects of such imagery, namely false intimacy.

This is an ecocritically oriented study with elements of autoethnography, of Stina Jackson's book Ödesmark and Therése Söderlind's Norrlands svårmod: roman om ett försvinnande. With a focus on the portrayal of Swedish northern nature in literature the study investigates whether the Norrland view of nature has changed since Romanticism or whether the Norrland forests are still as dark, mysterious and magical as they were during Romanticism. The study also examines whether nature is described as anthropomorphic or metaphysical in these novels. Finally, the essay discusses how the "non-human" is portrayed in the books and how it is used to alienate on different levels. As a result, the study shows that there are still romantic elements in nature literature that are dark, mysterious, and magical. Nature is described slightly differently between the authors; Söderlind has a more anthropocentric approach to the environment in her book while Jackson maintains a more metaphysical perspective. Jackson's metaphysical perspective gives her characters animalistic appearance and behaviours, alienating them in society. In Söderlind's anthropocentric perspective, nature makes a backdrop for the characters' lives.

While McCarthy studies have emphasized elements of the sacred in his writing, this thesis adds a new historical perspective and synthesis to reading paradigms of Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing combines the patterns of the ancient pre-Hebraic genre of the desert sublime with the basic formula of the American Western genre to interrogate McCarthy's question of whether in the postmodern moment one can still divest oneself in the desert and find access to the sublime. In an era of an invisible or absent God where post-humanist thought erases the anthropocentric supremacy of human over animal and the earth itself, the one constant in the desert sublime genre is the physical reality of the desert itself. Thus, McCarthy's recourse is to infuse the desert sublime with contemporary ecological thought. In the desert Billy Parham encounters other desert dwellers who share with him shards and traces of belief while Billy also learns bodily from the material experience of his physical sojourn. Billy is a nascent postmodern saint whose journeys into the desert reveal to him the ecotheological principle of the interconnectedness of all things as a natural physical law that undergirds the spiritual truth guiding ethical behavior. Billy arrives at a point of radical transformation that teaches him the necessity of choosing compassion, affiliation, simple service, and humility in a world of interconnected beings and living forms.