An Ecological Postmodern Interpretation Of Willa Cather's Works

Willa Cather is one of the most well-known American female writers in the 20th century.She has strong realistic concern and an intense ecological sense and pays much attention to the influence industrialism and modern ideologies have brought to ecosystem.In her works such as Death Comes for the Archbishop,Cather positively comes up with solutions to recover the ecological imbalance after revealing a series of ecological crises in the modern society.As the famous ideologist of postmodernism and eco-feminism as well as one of the significant representatives of ecological postmodernism,Charlene Spretnak has a deep ecological concern.She puts forward the theories related with ecological postmodernism by combining the de-centered,multiple and universal connected thoughts of postmodernism with the ecological crises awareness.In one of her representative works,The Resurgence of the Real:Body,Nature and Place in a Hypermodern World,Spretnak makes a summary to the rich connotation of modern ideologies which includes "industrialism","in opposition to nature and anthropocentrism","standardized","compartmentalize and contempt for indigenous peoples" as well as "hyper-masculine" and so on.Then she carries out a much more systematic elucidation of postmodernism theories from three perspectives namely "the knowing body","the creative cosmos" and "the complex sense of place".This thesis is an ecological postmodern interpretation of the three works of Willa Cather,namely My Antonia,The Professor 's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop,based on the related ecological postmodern thoughts advocated by Charlene Spretnak.The purpose of this thesis is to further explore the deep ecological thoughts as well as their enlightenment and significance to the modern society in Willa Cather's works.The thesis is made up of five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction to Willa Cather and her three works,namely My Antonia,The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop.The second one gives a brief introduction to Charlene Spretnak and her ecological postmodern thoughts as well as the differences between her thoughts with the ordinary ecological ideas.The third chapter carries out a discussion on the series of ecological imbalanced phenomena in modern society in the works based on the further reading and analysis of the novels.And the fourth one focuses on the solutions provided in the works of Willa Cather to solve the ecological crises from the ecological postmodern perspective.Then the final chapter is a conclusion of the whole thesis.