Environmental History as a Model of Eco-Criticism in Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl and Virgin Earth

Abstract

Eco criticism is the study of the relations between the physical environment and literature. It involves an earth-centered approach to literary studies. The subject of eco criticism takes between nature and culture, explicitly the cultural artefacts of language and literature. . As Hughes (2009) debates, even though eco-criticism has become a field in literary theory and in the extensive landscape of environmental history and cultural ecology, it could benefit from an enhanced frame work. Environmental History is relevant to numerous things, the history of the mutual relations between human race and remnants of nature. Cultural Ecology, on the other hand, is based on the interaction between man, culture and environment. It describes the roots of peculiar cultural type which characterize specific cultural space. This research attempts to analysis the Philippa Gregory’s The Red Queen based on the features of environmental history and cultural ecology as an eco-criticism hybrid model. In her novel, Gregory tries to define the true history and surrounding of Margaret Beaufort’s life who became the mother of the first Tudor’s king (Henry VII). First, with the reference to the features of environmental history and cultural ecology a model of analysis will be structured. Then, the analysis of Gregory’s novel based on these features will be indicated. Finally, the results of the analysis will be discussed to confirm how it can be implied as a novel’s approach to literary theory.