An Inquiry Into American Literature From An Ecocritical Perspective

With ecocriticism as the theoretical support and the historical development of American literature as the main thread, this dissertation explores the ecological thoughts and environmental consciousness implicated in the canons of the American writers from the colonial period to the postmodern age, by adopting an integrated approach of intercultural, cross-disciplinary studies, textual analysis and historical criticism.The whole dissertation is composed of seven parts.The introduction part is an overall evaluation of ecocriticism with regard to its origin, development and achievements in America, followed by a discussion of its philosophical, cultural and literary bases. It is pointed out that American ecocriticism has gone through three phases, through which course significant achievements have been made to contribute to the establishment of ecopoetics.Chapter I is devoted to a study of the ecological depiction during the early colonial period. It points out that behind the ecological descriptions there exists a far more significant purpose: they aim at an interpretation of the Puritanical ideology, a publicity of the Christian creeds and the establishment of the American national consciousness.Chapter II studies the ecological thoughts held and made manifest by great thinkers such as Emerson and Thoreau, who are not only meticulous, zealous observers of nature but also profound meditators in enunciating of the idea that human being ought to be in harmony with every part of nature.Chapter III attempts to re-read the canonized works by modern writers from an ecocritical perspective. An analysis of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Faulkner's The Bear and other literary works reveals the interrelation between human beings and nature as well as that between human beings and modern civilization.Chapter IV discusses the writings of postmodern writers such as W.S. Merwin, Gary Snyder and Don DeLillo, whose works convey thoughts of ecological protection and environmental consciousness. It argues that ecocriticism is an important issue of discourse in the postmodern context, and that "postmodernism" can be understood as a reflection upon the existential conditions of human beings during the process of modernization.Chapter V focuses on ecofeminist criticism. With a thorough examination of its origin, development, schools and perspectives and a detailed analysis of the ecological thoughts implicated in the works of women writers such as Mary Wilkins Freeman, Rachel Carson and Toni Morrison, it concludes that a comprehensive survey of such aspects as nature, gender, society, cultural spirit in ecology helps to make American ecofeminist literature and criticism appear as "an elm in silent spring" with immense vitality.The last part presents the conclusions and main arguments, with a further exploration of the significance and influence of American ecocriticosm studies as well as ecocriticism in China. They are as follows:American ecocriticism emerged in time of serious global environmental degradation. The presentecological problems that human beings face and will be confronted with are not so much a matter of technique or scientific management as a matter of ethics, philosophy and belief, or even that of poetics and aesthetics.The fundamental principles of American ecocriticism stem from various modern and contemporary Western environmental philosophies, such as "animal rights", "biocentrism", "ecocentrism", "ecofeminism", "theological environmentalism", "bioregionalism". To some extent, the ecological thoughts such as Aldo Leopold's "earth ethics", Holmes Rolston's "objective value" and Arne Naess's "deep ecology" form the philosophical basis of American ecocriticism, while the criticisms of Lynn White on Judah-Christianity provide the practice of ecocriticism from a religious perspective.Ecocriticism, which takes artistic imagination as the Utopian spirit, aims to reconstruct a macro-narrative and reestablish a profound mode. Writings about nature in colonial American period were in good measure a literary expression of ideal Puritan thoughts, and at the same time it played an important role in the construction of American national consciousness.Among writers in the period of American Romanticism, Emerson and Thoreau exert all-encompassing influence upon modern environmental movements. Their works Nature and Walden, two typical ecocritical texts, apparently embody some embryonic thoughts of modern ecocritical theories and practices. And the poetry of Whitman also implies profound ecopoetic insight: nature not only has the ability of identifying the relationship between human and nonhuman, but is also the source of literary creation; poetry is a happy medium through which nature communicates, approaches, and integrates with the soul of human beings.One of the objectives of ecocriticism as the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment is to discover the representation of the latter in literature through observing its absence in texts and to awaken readers' ecological protective consciousness by recuperating, reconsidering, and reinterpreting the genre of nature writing. The classic works such as Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea and Faulkner's The Bear suggest that man and nature are interdependent, that the management of ecological crisis requires a thorough adjustment of our conceptions, values, and lifestyles, and that the character and economic mode of capitalism serve as the enemies of nature and the roots of current global ecological crisis.The postmodern age is one of human ecology. The study of the works of some American postmodern writers such as W.S.Merwin, Gary Snyder and Don DeLillo brings us to the realization that how modern people "habitat" in the postmodern culture is apparently a matter of "life and death".With an investigation into the literary works by American women writers, it is found that ecofeminist viewpoints, ecological thoughts and environmental conscience abound in these works, with their themes involving the identity of women and nature, the questioning of the modern Western outlook on science and technology, and the desire for liberation of women as well as that of nature.