Ecocritica come critica tematica o tematologia militante: considerazioni inattuali

The essay discusses from a theoretical point of view some of the directions of American ecocriticism. A perhaps outdated specificity of literary knowledge is contrasted with the ethical and pedagogical vis of which these approaches are advocates, while the hermeneutics of the text is contrasted with the idea of the literary text as document. This analysis, which pits American ecocriticism against European models of the study of the relationship between literary text and environment, is based on the conviction that literature, too, can contribute to the fundamental and irrepressible debate on climate change, and thus to the very survival of man on earth, without having to become ancillary to knowledge perceived as more urgent.