Study On The Discourses Of Lawrence Buell's Ecocriticism

Since the 1980 s,Lawrence Buell turned to the study field of ecocriticism that published The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau,Nature Writing,and the Formation of American Culture;Writing for an Endangered World :Literature,Culture,and Environment In the U.S.and Beyond;and The Future of Environmental Criticism:Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination,where he constructed his ecocritical discourses of environmental imagination and place imagination.Buell put forward “environmental criticism” instead of “ecocriticism”,because the concept of “environmental criticism” expanded the scope of ecocriticism and more accurately reflected the interdisciplinary research of ecocriticism.With the turn of Buell's ecocriticism,the theory of “environmental imagination” has gradually turned to the urban imagination and toxic imagination.Place imagination is another important ecocritical discourse of Buell's.With the intensification of the globalization,the boundaries of place have been gradually weakened.During the analysis of place-attachment and non-place,the imagination of bioregionalism has achieved the transition from local to global.Buell's discourse strategies of ecocriticism mainly focuses on two aspects: the choice of environmental texts and the value stand of critical discourses.The mature theory is a powerful guide to the interpretation of the text,and the interpretation of the text is the cornerstone of the theoretical construction.Based on the criticism of the texts is one of the Buell's discourse strategies.Buell chooses use the “environmentality” to frame his research texts.In his view,the environmental texts should be the "environment-oriented works".In the "two wave" division of ecocriticsm,Buell clarified environmental concept and scope and achieved the shift of the value position of his critical discourses from the advocacy of anthropocentrism to advocacy of environmental justice.Many writers and researchers were stimulated by environmental problems and along with the environmental turn,they reflected the interdisciplinary issues of environmental study.Buell's life experiences,traditional natural writing and ethics and politics of environmental criticism constituted his important discourse resources.Compared with the different ecocritics of Anglo-American,such as Scott Slovic and Jonathan Bate,we deeply understand that Buell's ecocritical discourses and the research field and research tendency of British and American ecocriticism,and then grasp the whole picture of Anglo-American ecocriticism.On this basis,we can explored the influence of Buell's ecocritical discourses on Chinese scholars and Chinese ecocriticism that hope to realize the localization of ecocriticism.At present,the ecocriticism is still in the stage of development,and it now seems to stand with respect to the typical challenges or crises that critical movements can expect to face.These include at least four: the challenge of organization,the challenge of professional legitimation,the challenge of defining distinctive models of critical inquiry,and the challenge of establishing their significance beyond the academy.How to deal with these challenges and realize the ecological purpose of “writing for an endangered world” is a problem.