Environmental Science and Literary Imagination: An Ecocritical Study of Richard Powers’s the Overstory and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour

Environmental science has become an important area of contemporary intellectual discussion because the relationship between human beings and the natural world is increasingly affected by deforestation, climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, habitat destruction and the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Literature, although primarily a creative form of expression, has the ability to transform scientific concerns into human experiences that can be emotionally understood by readers. Contemporary literary works therefore provide an important space for examining environmental problems not only as scientific issues but also as social, ethical and psychological concerns. This research paper examines the representation of environmental science in Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (2012) through an ecocritical perspective. Powers presents trees and forests as active participants in the human world and questions the anthropocentric assumption that nature exists primarily for human use. Kingsolver, through the unexpected migration of monarch butterflies, brings climate change into the everyday life of a rural community and demonstrates how ecological disruption affects human relationships, economic security and social consciousness. The comparative analysis argues that both novels transform environmental science into literary experience by connecting scientific knowledge with emotion, memory, social responsibility and ethical action. The study further suggests that environmental literature can contribute to ecological awareness by encouraging readers to understand the interdependence between human and non-human life.

Environmental Science, Ecocriticism, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Deforestation

1. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Harvard University Press, 1995. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, editors. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. University of Georgia Press, 1996. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behaviour. Harper, 2012. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Lloyd, Christopher, and Jessica Rapson. “‘Family Territory’ to the ‘Circumference of the Earth’: Local and Planetary Memories of Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour.” Textual Practice, vol. 31, no. 5, 2017, pp. 911–931. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W. W. Norton, 2018. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Ali, Banaz Wirya. “An Eco-Critical Study of Richard Power’s The Overstory.” Journal of Language Studies. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Lee, Young-hyun. “Psychological Avoidance, Climate Justice, and Agency in Flight Behavior.” Literature and Environment, vol. 23, no. 4, 2024, pp. 117–153. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Mahmud, Delveen H., and Sherzad Sh. Babo. “Richard Powers’ The Overstory: The Interconnectedness of Human Lives and Trees.” Humanities Journal of University of Zakho, 2025. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Seasonal Variations of Some Physico-Chemical Parameters of Ramsagar Dighi, Dinajpur, Bangladesh
• Why Pollution Endures: Geographic Foundations of Environmental Crisis in Russia’s Industrial Heartlands
• Occurrence of Microplastics in Hijo River Sediments, Davao Region, Philippines
• Assessing the Contribution of Microfinance to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh Author Details
• Waste-To-Energy: A Strategy for Urban Sprawl Management in Enugu Metropolis, South East, Nigeria