Shakespeare’s Starlings

Scientists, environmentalists, and nature writers often report that all common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in North America descend from a flock released in New York City in 1890 by Eugene Schieffelin, a man obsessed with importing all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. This article uses the methods of literary history to investigate this popular anecdote. Today starlings are much despised as an invasive species that displaces native birds and does almost a billion dollars worth of damage to agriculture annually. Because of the starling’s pest status, the Schieffelin story is considered a cautionary tale about the dangers of ecological ignorance. Diving into the history of the Schieffelin story reveals, however, that it is almost entirely fictional. Tracing how its elements emerged and changed over a century of retelling clarifies how the story came to shore up uncertainties in the bird’s environmental history and to distract from the lack of data supporting the starling’s supposedly disastrous impacts. In explaining how a fiction repeated over time attained the status of fact in debates about invasive species, this literary history suggests humanistic methods can serve as useful tools for understanding the value-laden narratives underpinning environmental attitudes and practices today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Approach to Ecology

This article attempts to explore Emerson’s trust in nature and his efforts to establish strong affinity between human being and natural world using the tool of eco criticism. Ecological study attempts to elaborate the significance of nature for the benefit of human beings. Protecting nature means protecting the life of human beings because when the nature is destroyed, it eventually hampers the daily life of human individuals. Nature writers have honestly recognized the value of nature to encourage people to love it and understand its value. Living beings undergo several experiences in the company of nature and they maintain their miseries and happiness which come side by side. Therefore, it is essential that human beings must honestly attempt to strengthen their understanding with the environmental issues.

Stupid Animals in Ancient Natural Histories

Over the centuries since antiquity, nature writers have evaluated different animal species. One criterion for such an evaluation has been intellect. At the lowest point on the scale of intellectual abilities was stupidity. Ancient authors often attributed inadequate intellect to various animal species by using pejorative expressions. The aim of this study is to determine which animal species Greek and Roman writers considered as inferior in the hierarchy of intellectual abilities, and why these species were chosen in particular. Furthermore, the paper attempts to verify the evaluations formulated in antiquity in light of contemporary observations of nature.

A Sumbiography

A "sumbiography" is the term used in this book to explain the cumulative influences on a life, from childhood to adulthood, which have culminated in the author writing a book about the intimate relationships between humans, other forms of life, and nature. These influences include extended family and the nature writers and their narratives that have come to influence a life. A sumbiography explains how one attains the ability to feel, first hand, the emotional richness of contact with nature. The meaning and importance of the 'sumbios' or living together with nature, people and other beings is what a sumbiography attempts to describe and acknowledge. It 'positions' the writing for the reader.

Metaphorical Construals of Nature in Thoreau’s Writings

The article investigates how the concept of nature is metaphorically construed in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, one of the earliest and most influential nature writers. The analysis has been inspired by insights from cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics, especially Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Fauconnier and Turner’s Blending Theory. Several different metaphorical construals of the concept of nature appear in Thoreau’s writings which have been examined in this study, including Walden, The Maine Woods, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a selection from his journal, and two collections of his earlier and later natural history essays and manuscripts. One can encounter there, obviously, conventional personifications of nature, such as Mother Nature, which, however, is questioned by Thoreau, as well as the occasional construal of nature as a companion or a bride. Other conventional conceptual metaphors, which are more frequently employed by him, include the metaphorical construal of nature as a work of art or as a literary work and once, more unconventionally, as a concert. Natural entities are also construed as other kinds of products. An original metaphor, which frequently appears in Thoreau’s late manuscript on the dispersion of seeds, is the personification of nature as a forester.