Abstract:
Early in his landmark ecocritical book The Comedy of Survival, Joseph Meeker
develops an intriguing hypothesis about human behaviour. He remarks the species Homo
sapiens tend to behave like an invasive or pioneering organism, entering a bio-geographical
region and aggressively outcompeting all other species for space and resources. Moreover,
he suggests, human cultural traditions, at least in the West, have reinforced such behaviour,
continually insisting that the impulses he describes are both necessary and right. While
Meeker's work goes on to assess a number of literary works in both the tragic and comic
modes, his work never fully explores this hypothesis in the context of human pioneers; that
is, there is no ~xploration o( how these themes manifest themselves within our culture and
what role they might play in the culture of specific pioneering groups.
This project is an attempt at just such an analysis, examining the validity of Meeker's
hypothesis through a case study of settler literature in Upper Canada/Ontario between the .
years 1800-1867. It explores Meeker's work within three main areas: first, Chapter Two
situates his book historically within the field of ecocriticism, showing what came before
and the explosion of ecocritical inquiry that followed its release. This chapter also delves
into the rift between the natural sciences and humanities, arguing that a move towards
deeper interdisciplinarity is r:tecessary for the future. Chapter Three examines the
biological and ecological ground on which Meeker rests his hypothesis through exploring
evolutionary biology as well as invasive and pioneer species behaviour. Lastly, Chapter
Four examines how these ecological principles are manifested in the writings of early
Canadian settlers, suggesting that Meeker's hypothesis indeed finds itself on stable footing.
