Ecological criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the environment. This field of study was established in the United States in the 1960s. It was initially titled environmental literary criticism, ecopoetics, and green cultural studies.  As opposed to its contemporaneous critical approaches, ecocriticism adopts an earth-centric approach and raises new questions. It studies the impact of physiological conditions on the literary process and adopts a color of resistance by raising questions on the causes of climate change. This essay attempts to explain the background of ecocriticism and sheds light on its origins and evolution. It further elaborates on the methodology of ecocriticism by differentiating it from contemporaneous critical approaches.