"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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is definitive, not only for its exegesis of literary ecocriticism as a discipline but also
for its analysis of environmental literature and practice in South Africa. Apart from
this the main volume on South African ecocriticism is Literature, Nature and the
Land: Ethics and Aesthetics of the Environment (collected AUETSA papers 1992)
edited by Nigel Bell and Meg Cowper Lewis. However, not all the articles in this
volume are within the scope of the volume’s title. Useful articles include Julia
Martin’s “New, with Added Ecology?: Hippos, Forests and Environmental Literacy”,
Stanley Frielick’s “Deep Ecology, the Environment, and African Literature” and
Geoff Hutchings’ “Accommodating the Language to the Land”.
Other South African scholars have published occasional ecocritical papers. These
include Godfrey Meintjes’ “Environmental Communication: Notes on the
relationship(s) between ecology and literature” and Dan Wylie’s various
contributions to the field: an article on Roy Campbell (“Pioneer and Vulture: Roy
Campbell and the Natural World”), on John Eppel, (“Close to Epiphanies: The Poetry
of John Eppel and the Natural World”) and various poetry reviews for English
Academy Review. Duncan Brown’s “Environment and Identity: Douglas
Livingstone’s A Littoral Zone” views the poetry from an ecological perspective. In
short, South African literary ecocriticism is still in its fledgling stage.
The next chapter gives a detailed review of the critical material on Douglas Livingstone’s
earlier work and the final four chapters include critical responses to A Littoral Zone.