The Humanist Spirit And The Ecological Consciousness

This dissertation seeks to survey the natural imagery of Chinese and Western poetry from the viewpoint of ecocriticism, and it is divided into four chapters.In the first chapter, the author tries to probe into the philosophical and ecological connotation of the natural imagery in Chinese and Western poetry. In the aspect of the philosophical resources, by studying the theory of natural imagery of the different periods, we can feel the pulse of the development of the philosophy and the trends of ideas, and apperceive the seeking of the man for the mysteries of nature, from the ancient Greek theory of "Four Elements", the "Return to Nature" doctrine of the Enlightenment and the nature philosophy of Romanticism, to the Jacobinical postmodern viewpoint of nature.And in the aspect of ecocritical exploration, we can feel that the poets pursue unfailingly the correspondence of natural imagery with the human being, and pay a great attention to unhuman forms of lives and the substantial environment. And the author also considers that such Eastern idea as oneness of Heaven and Man doubtlessly plays an important role for some poets to form their ecological concept of nature.The aim of the second chapter "the philosophical exploration into the 'poets of nature'" is to discuss the writers' life consciousness and the ecological request, embodied in the natural imagery created by some representatives of the nature poets such as Thomas Hardy and Dai Wangshu through the textual analyzing of the images of chronometer, propagation and so on. The author considers that the "poets of nature" strive to seek the blood relation of the human being with the nature through the images of propagation, and to find the mysterious strength and beauty from these images. And, the "poets of nature" try hard to express their own philosophical ideas and the complicated condition of the human world, using the moral symbols of the animal and vegetable images, and describing the mutual dependence and conversion.In the third chapter, by analyzing the artistic characteristics of Chinese and Western poetry and such factors as the texture structure, the system of metaphor, the mode of sound in the lyrical poems of nature by Shelley, Goethe, the author of the dissertation tries to research into the contribution of the nature poems in the aspect of the aesthetic function and artistic technique.And the fourth chapter is focused on the comparative study and influence of the natural imagery in Chinese and Western poetry. In the comparison of the imagery theory and of such images as moon in Chinese and Western poetry, the aim of this chapter is to explore the aesthetic personality and the cultural tradition of the different nations, and to study the profound themes and the individual intention and the personal symbolization. And this chapter also includes the multiple interrelations of Chinese poetry and Western poetry, and it is focused on influence of the Chinese traditional culture on the nature poet such as Walt Whitman and the Imagist poets, and on the contrary, the influence of theirs on modern and contemporary Chinese Poetry. It is important to say that such kind of multiple interrelation play an intermedium role for Chinese culture in the transformation from the classical one to the modern stage.This study tries to break the limit of the anthropocentralist viewpoint, and to set up a dialectical relationship between the humanist spirit and the ecological consciousness. By the investigation of the natural imagery, the aim of the study is to arouse poetry reader's feeling of the ecological consciousness, beside the aesthetic joviality, and to make this consciousness into the basic factor of the literary criticism, exerting a subtle influence on the morals and sensibilities of human beings.