Research On Margaret Atwood's Ecological Writing

Along with the development of the civilization, the ecological crisis becomes a serious problem. In order to arouse people's concern to the Earth and other lives in the natural world and prevent from an ecological disaster, the ecoliterature carries out a duty-bound responsibility. Margaret Atwood, known as Queen of Canadian literature, is an outstanding represent of the ecoliterature camp.Started writing since 1956, Atwood's works have been translated into more than 30 languages, and got an international reputation. Feminism, nationalism and ecocriticism are the main three topics in her works. However, according to the research materials collected from home and abroad, the writer finds that both the domestic and international researchers mainly concern about feminism and nationalism shown in Atwood's works, but pay little attention to her ecological writing. What's more, rare researchers carry on a systematic research on her integral ecological writing.The paper intends to take Atwood's four novels The Edible Woman (1956)﹑Surfacing (1972)﹑ The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003) for example to carry out a systematic and integral research on her ecological novels.The paper is made up by three chapters. In chapter one, through Atwood's original life experience, the writer tries to analyze the background and inevitability for Atwood to choose ecoliterature. Meanwhile, it makes a brief introduction of the four novels.Chapter two, the writer makes a deeper discussion on how Atwood's ecological writing represent alienation and opposition between human beings and nature, which rooted in the crisis from human beings and their society. The paper intends to analyze how human's thought,culture and the mode of social development influnce even decide human's attitude and movements towards nature and life, which caused the entire ecological crisis.Chapter three tries to prove the meaning and impact of Atwood's ecological writing. Atwood tried her best to find a way for human beings and nature to share a harmonious relationship with each other. Her successful ecological writing becomes a profound guidance towards ecoliterature, and greatly encouraged literary workers to insist on their faith, make literature become the final defender of the Earth.