This paper proposes ecocritical readings of three classics of English literature, Macbeth, Water Babies and Chronicles of Narnia. First, the bases of the ecocritical analysis are described, underlining the importance of multiple ontologies. Secondly, the selection of texts is justified, and in the three works the presence of guardian spirits of Nature is checked from a prosopographic analysis of the different characters, in order to delimit the affinities and differences and make the underlying patterns visible. The importance of these narrative patterns and the importance of the folkloric hypotext in the three cases is concluded, and some didactic possibilities are suggested.