Ecological Competencies Development in the Course of “History of Foreign Literature”: Methodological Outline

Abstract

The article elucidates the development of environmental issues in foreign
literature, taking into account the content of the relevant disciplines in higher and
secondary education institutions. The study substantiates the concepts of ecocriticism and eco-literature, in particular, such varieties of the latter as ecofiction,
ecopoetry, non-fiction nature writing as well as natural-philosophical and ecosophical
literature. The author offers an innovative approach to the typology of ecotexts and
considers them in terms of the conception of the American ecologist B. Commoner:
Everything is connected to everything else; Everything must go somewhere; Nature
knows best; There is no such thing as a free lunch. Any law can be confirmed by a
particular trend in the literary process and general cultural development and
illustrated with relevant works from world literature. One can find verification of all
four of the above-mentioned B. Commoner's laws in Lucretius' poem "On the Nature
of Things".

To understand the relationship between a human and nature through the prism
of literature, it is essential to correlate the concept of the universe with realistic and
romantic types of artistic worldview. The rational type of thinking is characterized by
spreading mechanical laws to the world of living nature, while intuitive thinking, on
the contrary, implies the application of the laws of life to an inanimate world and, as
a consequence, its spiritualization.
B. Commoner's theory is illustrated by the works of foreign authors, in
particular, those included in the school curriculum. Among them are J. W. Goethe,
A. Saint-Exupery, W. Whitman, H. Melville, R. Kipling, A. Huxley, E. Hemingway,
R. Bradbury, Mo Yan and others. In the focus of the case study are the trends in the
landscape poetry development and animalistic themes in world literature.
The article determines the stages of ecological competencies development,
concentrating on emotional-motivational, information and cognitive, operational and
activity-based, personality-oriented, and practice-oriented ones. The application of
B. Commoner's laws of ecology in teaching foreign literature opens a new
methodological perspective for literary and pedagogical research, in particular,
supports an integrative approach to teaching academic disciplines. The suggested
approach is appropriate for the formation of environmental competencies of the students in the course of History of Foreign Literature with the further use of the
acquired skills and knowledge in their school practice.