George Eliot's Ideas On The Relationship Between Man And Nature

The theme of my dissertation is George Eliot's concept of the relationship between man and nature in her three early novels. As one of the greatest novelists in the Victorian Age, George Eliot has been paid more and more attention to in China in the recent two decades. Most of the research about her is concerned with morality, psychology or feminism etc. However, she, in fact, also wrote much about the relations between human beings and nature in her novels, which is pushing her to a new research field, that is, ecocriticism.As a critical method just put forward in 1970s, ecocriticism is new but quite vigorous. In her three early novels, Eliot wrote much about the relations between human beings and nature. Hence, my dissertation tries to reveal and analyze the ecocritic ideas of George Eliot in her three early novels: The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Adam Bede, which are planned to be approached from the following aspects: the recreational and purification value of nature, the loss of self, and the recovery of self. Chapter One provides a brief review of the researches done on George Eliot and an introduction to ecocriticism. Chapter Two focuses on the purification value of Nature in her three novels: The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Adam Bede. With a case study of The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Chapter Three and Chapter Four offer an exposition that the loss of nature results in the loss of self while the return to nature leads to the recovery of self.