Abstract
The discipline of ecocriticism (or ecological literary studies) can be traced back to the earliest commentaries on natural themes in human texts, such as conversations about paintings of animals on the walls of European caves or discussions about how ancient songs invoked rain to bring crops to life. In A Century of Early Ecocriticism, David Mazel (2001) argues that some of the earliest examples of academic ecocritical studies of literature began in the 1860s with commentaries on works focused on environmental topics, such as the writings of John and William Bartram and Henry David Thoreau. He follows a trajectory of