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Abstract
Ecocriticism is the recent branch of the literary criticism and theory which deals with the relationship between the environment and literature. The ecocritics evaluate and interpret the texts on the ecological point of view and unravels the environmental issues through setting, plot and characters. It is the demonstration of the ecology and natural objects. The literary critics study the literary texts in association environment. It first started in 1970s but reached its heights in 1990s. The ecocritics reveals the nature as a living entity like the human beings. It did not remain confining to natural or environmental science but made its way to literature and literature became an important tool for critics in order to highlight the environmental issues. It was William Ruckert who first coined the term in his essay Literature and ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism in 1978. Rachel Carson is known as the one of the forerunner of environmental studies. She first time highlights the issues of environmental decay through the use of chemicals like DDT. Ecocriticism existed since the romantic period, though it came into limelight in the second half of 20th century. In the contemporary era, the critics focus on nature and society. So ecocriticism become a new field for research and researcher scholars begin to highlight environmental problems and ecological imbalance through the interpretation of the different texts. In india it came a bit late but Indian authors took it very enthusiastically and began to write on it. They use nature as a background in their works and portrayed the characters who are directly or indirectly influence with the ecology. Authors like as Amitav Ghosh, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Jayant Mahapatra, Ramanujan, Bhavani Bhattacharya. Ecological imbalance has become the burning issue in the present time.