The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture

Ecological and Social Wisdom in Camel Praise Poetry Sung by Afar Nomads of Ethiopia

“…We discussed the composition of each poem, its verses, and what type of social or environmental message the poets are trying to communicate. In undertaking an eco-critical investigation of the Gāli Sāré poems, I applied four of Buell's (1995) criteria of environmentalness, specifically exploring the degree to which, 1) the non-human entities are the subjects of the poems or verses; 2) the human interest is not the most important theme of the verses; 3) human beings are held accountable to environmental injustice; and 4) environment is considered not just as a fixed entity but as a dynamic connected process. These criteria were used to evaluate 250 oral poems audio-recorded from 75 oral poets around Aba'alá town and translated from Afar to English by the author.…”

The intertwinement of speculative fictions and environmental activism: Towards a sensory sociology of climate fiction

“…178-179). Through 'narrative affects' such as disquiet, wonder, enthrallment and even sickness, climate fictions organise, stimulate and enrich 'the environmental imagination' of an imperilled world (Buell, 1995), thereby involving 'readers ethically in our collective bodily and environmental futures' and ultimately re-energising environmentalist protest politics (Houser, 2016, p. 3).…”

Engaging the Imagination: ‘New Nature Writing’, Collective Politics and the Environmental Crisis

“…One way to do this of course is to take questions of language beyond fine writing and into rhetoric and what we might call political communication. Buell (1995) for example, argues that an indigenous community's metaphor of water as 'lifeblood' should be recognised as more valid than the corporate notion of it as a 'commodity'. The debate about how to move beyond the personal has been a long-running one in ecocriticism (Ryle, 2002;Parham, 2008;Gifford, 2008).…”

“…Gifford, drawing on Buell, notes the tendency of British ecocriticism (following Raymond Williams, and as opposed to much American writing on the topic) to frame nature in terms of ownership, class and community rather than in notions of 'spirit of place', the overt political framing of the former more closely, and critically, aligned with campaigns for environmental justice. Buell (1995) sees two ways forward for ecocriticism, which could equally be applied to the production of new nature writing. One is for it to engage more explicitly with what he calls environmental illness, ranging from asthma to depression.…”