The introduction to Part 1 of this double volume traced the institutional history of ecocriticism by referring predominantly to the initiatives of Anglo-American ecocritics as frontrunners in the field. A common denominator shared by the collection of essays in the first volume was the focus on human behaviour and attitudes towards the environment with specific reference to the human/animal relationship in a South African context. In the second volume the focus shifts slightly to consider the nature of ecocritical writing/reading, the representation of landscape(s) and the potential of literary texts to promote an ecological culture.

Marshall (1994) states that, despite ...