Ecocritical Readings in Select Contemporary Indian English Fiction

Abstract

This study basically highlights Ecocritical Readings in Select Contemporary Indian English newlineFiction and proposes to study the emergence of Ecocriticism in India, and its significance in newlineIndian English fiction. It analyzes the contributions of writers and theoreticians who have newlineextensively dealt with this literary theory (Ecocriticism). Their different points of view will be newlinetaken into account and incorporated into the project. It shall also make an attempt to explore how newlinethe various discourses such as culture, gender and environment, which are implicit in the very newlinefabric of the novels that have been chosen for the detailed study in this project. newlineEcocriticism as a distinct genre developed in the Western literary landscape only in the newlinelast few decades of the twentieth century when many scholars were compelled to study the newlinerelationships between literature and the physical environment knowing fully the environmental newlinecrisis and its declension narratives about extinctions, loss of species, pollution, global warming, newlinetoxicity and deforestation epitomize the Anthropocene. Thus, this study attempts a small step to newlinewiden the horizon of Ecocriticism in Indian English Literature. There are various issues newlinediscussed in the different chapters of the project, i.e., Ecofeminism as a socio-politico and newlinephilosophical theory and movement combines concepts of ecology and feminism together and newlineexplores their interconnectedness from a feminist point of view. As a theory, it focuses on the newlineexegesis of narratives from such a standpoint with an objective to end all forms of oppression on newlinewomen and nature. The term Ecofeminism was first used by Francoise d Eauborne, a French newlinefeminist in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (Feminism or Death), 1974, since then, newlineecofeminism has evolved to gain worldwide acceptance as a term describing a socio-political and newlineeven cultural movement for emancipation of women and nature from the state-apparatus of men s dominant force. Women-Nature relation as a sort of symbiotic connectives and raises the newlinebanner for