O'Malley, J.M. and Chamot, A. U. (1994). The CALLA Handbook: Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach. U.S.A: Addison–Wesley Publishing Company.
Marsh, D. (2000). Using Languages to Learn and Learning to Use Languages. (Eds.) D. Marsh & G. Langé.
Finland: University of Jyväskylä.
Retrieved April15th, 2008 at http://www.clilcompendium.com/1uk.pdf
Marsh, D. (2002). CLIL/ EMILE-The European Dimension. Action, Trends and Foresight Potential.
Contract DG/EAC: European Commission. (Ed.) D. Marsh. Finland: University of Jyväskylä.
Retrieved April 18 , 2008 atth
http://www.phkarlsruhe.de/cms/fileadmin/user_upload/dozenten/schlemminger/enseig nement_bilingue/Marsh-CLIL-EMILE.pdf
Mohan, B. (1986). Language and Content. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Muñoz, C. (2002). Relevance and Potential of CLIL. In D.Marsh (Ed.), CLIL/ EMILE-The European Dimension. Action, Trends and Foresight Potential. Contract DG/EAC: European Commission.
Finland: University of Jyväskylä.
Retrieved April 18 , 2008 atth
http://www.phkarlsruhe.de/cms/fileadmin/user_upload/dozenten/schlemminger/enseig nement_bilingue/Marsh-CLIL-EMILE.pdf
Navés, T. & Muñoz, C. (1999). CLIL experiences in Spain. In Marsh, D. & Langé, G. (Eds.). Implementing Content and Language Integrated Learning. Jyväskylä: Finland.
Pavesi, M.,Bertocchi, D. , Hofmanová, M. & Kasianka, M. (2001). Teaching Through a Foreign Language.
A Guide to Teachers and Schools to Using Foreign Languages in Content Teaching. (Ed.) G.
Langé.
Skehan, P. (1999). A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
subject, and conversely, the content of the subject generated language learning, particularly through the development of reading, writing and speaking skills.
In recent years, further interdisciplinary work with other subjects in the curriculum has been promoted, largely due to the fact that the teaching of literature is nowadays informed and substantiated by a large number of diverse literary theories and critical practices: Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Post structuralism, Psychoanalytical Approaches, Marxist Approaches, Cognitive Poetics and Reader Response Theory among others, which of course have obvious links to linguistics, history, anthropology and psychology. Being a literature teacher-not a literary critic- has allowed me the freedom to choose those aspects of the different theories available which best suit my pedagogical purposes, so rather than use a given literary theory as a set of rules to abide by, I advise my students to use them as tools for interpretation, as a kind of charter to navigate through texts. My own teaching practice leans towards Reader Response Theory, which defines the act of reading as a dynamic process in which readers assess their own expectations against the text (Eagleton, 1996: 66-67, Iser, W. 1972, in Lodge, D. (ed), 1988:214, Pope, R. 1998: 245), i.e., readers possess a set of emotions, knowledge and ideologies-sometimes referred to as the reader's schemata- which is activated by the text. The text evokes a response in the reader, so that its meaning is constructed by a transaction between the text and the reader. This approach has, in my view, an immense pedagogical potential, as it allows students to explore their own schemata, and even to resort to those literary theories that they feel most comfortable with, so that, for instance, someone interested in exploring the psychological processes undergone by a character will find Psychoanalytical Approaches helpful, whereas someone inclined to delve into the ideological frameworks present in a text will find Marxist Approaches more suitable.
One of the latest theories that have emerged within the area of Cultural Studies is Ecocriticism, which, as the name suggests, focuses on study of green issues in literary and non-literary texts. In a world threatened by ecological imbalance, we are constantly bombarded by the media with alarming news about the consequences of climate change, the near extinction of animal and plant species, or the devastating effects of deforestation. Many times, we suffer such effects at first hand, with no need of the vicarious experience of the media to remind us that
our planet is at risk. Such perception of the fragility of our world, I will argue, has become part of our schemata, or mind set, along of course with our personal and social experience. If a literary work “[…] gains its significance from the way in which the minds and emotions of particular readers respond to the linguistic stimuli offered by the text” (Rosenblatt, L. 1995: 28), then our response to literary texts might be informed and enriched by our awareness and sensitivity to green issues.
How can we read a literary text from an ecocritical perspective? First, we need to deconstruct the polarity culture/nature, as in this binary opposition we tend to privilege culture (human activity) over nature (non-human forces). In most western societies, there seems to be “a valorisation of the human/cultural over the natural” (Benton,T. 2001, in Lopez,J. and Potter, G., 2001: 134). This superiority of the human over the “rest of nature” is so much ingrained in our minds that even Kate Soper, one the major contributors to the development of Ecocriticism, needs to get hold of this polarity to define nature:
Nature is opposed to culture, to history, to convention, to what is artificially worked or produced, in short, to everything which is defining of the
order of the human.
(Soper, K., 1995: 1)
For the purposes of an ecocritical analysis, nature then should be seen as something tangible, concrete, subject to human activity but not inferior to it.
According to Peter Barry, “[…] For the ecocritic, nature really exists, out there beyond ourselves […] actually present as an entity which affects us, and which we can affect, perhaps fatally, if we mistreat it.” (Barry, P., 2002: 252). Once this premise is clear, we can begin to delve into the text to see how it portrays the way humans and nature interact with each other; moreover, as 21 century readers, st
we can compare our own perception of nature, burdened with the sense our ecological predicament, with the perception that readers in earlier contexts might have had.
For instance, let us consider William Blake's “The Tyger”, from his Songs of Experience, published in 1794:
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The tiger has traditionally been interpreted as a symbol in Blake's poetry, which stands for “creative energy that no one should try to control” (Carter, R. and McRae, J., 2001: 204). Most likely, for the audiences contemporary to Blake, the tiger must have meant a powerful force of nature, associated with those “savage”
and uncivilized far off lands Britain had begun to conquer. Does the tiger stand for the same for us? For most people, the tiger still conjures up images of fear, awe and wonder, but it is mingled with the fact that this is one of the many endangered species in our planet. The fearful symmetry of Blake's tiger has been sadly controlled and almost extinguished. An interesting follow-up activity which can be done in class is to trace the evolutionary history of the tiger, and to try to discover when and how, and for which political and economic reasons, its numbers have decreased.
Shakespeare's Sonnet XII also renders itself for a comparative analysis like the one presented above. This sonnet deals with one of Shakespeare's recurrent themes-the inexorability of the passing of time, and the human condition which is inescapably subject to it. (Ewbank, I. 1971, in Jones, P. (ed) 1977:226).
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls are silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green, all girdled up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow, And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense,
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
This sonnet conjures up images of natural cycles, such as the passing of the seasons, to illustrate a point: the cycles of life and death, youth, prime and decay are present around us, and also in us. The only way to escape death is, paradoxically, to create new life, as nature wisely does. Most probably, Elizabethans must have witnessed these cycles of nature year after year, unaltered. What about us? Can we see these cycles so clearly? What has happened to our planet since that sonnet was written? As a post-reading activity, students can trace the causes and effects of climate change.
The above are just two examples of how an ecocentric perspective can add a new dimension to the interpretation of literary texts, but this approach can be applied to many kinds of texts belonging to different genres and produced at different historical periods. Romantic productions, for instance, which usually foreground nature, offer a rich source for ecocritical discussion. Many Victorian novels, like Charles Dickens' Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, portray the effects of industrialisation not only on the lives of the characters but also on the landscape: smoke from the factories taint buildings and waste from the factories pollute the rivers. Postcolonial narratives, like Anita Desai's The Village by the Sea, make the disruption of natural ecosystems instrumental for the development of plot. Even those texts in which nature and its resources are not explicitly mentioned offer the reader the possibility to explore this absence, to reflect on why there is seemingly no interaction with nature in the text.
Of course, it would be pedagogically and methodologically fruitless to reduce the meaning of any given text to an ecocritical interpretation. As I have suggested earlier in this paper, all critical practices can be profitable in class, yet given the troubled relationship we are holding with nature at present, adding a “green”
dimension to reading can actually lead, at least, to develop a greater awareness of the environmental crisis we are undergoing. Moreover, if we plan our lessons within a CLIL framework, an ecocritical analysis of literary texts offers opportunities for the integration of knowledge which are two-fold: language skills can be developed through content, and the content of the literature lesson can be informed by the content of other areas such as biology and ecology.
References
Barry, P. (2002): Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Benton, T. (2001): “Why are Sociologists Naturephobes?” in López, J. and G. Potter (eds.) (2001) After Postmodernism. London and New York: The Athlone Press.
Carter, R. and J. McRae (2001): The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland.
London and New York: Routledge.
Eagleton, T. (1996): Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Ewbank, I. (1971) “Shakespeare's Poetry” in Jones, P. (ed.) (1977) Shakespeare: The Sonnets.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan.
Iser, W. (1972) “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach” in Lodge, D. (ed) (1988) Modern Criticism and Theory. London and New York: Longman.
Jones, P. (ed.) (1977) Shakespeare: The Sonnets. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London:
Macmillan.
Lodge,D. (ed) (1988) Modern Criticism and Theory. London and New York: Longman.
López, J. and Potter, G. (eds.) (2001) After Postmodernism. London and New York: The Athlone Press.
Pope,R. (1998) The English Studies Book. London and New York: Routledge.
Rosenblatt, L. (1995) Literature as Exploration. New York: MLA.
Soper, K. (1995) What is Nature? Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human. Oxford:Blackwell.