The Study Of Murphy’s Ecofeminist Literary Criticism Theory

Patrick D.Murphy is an outstanding scholar in the study of ecofeminist literary criticism theory.In most of his theoretical works,Murphy always explains the existence reality of women and nature as "others" in patriarchal society with his own unique visions.Murphy constantly explores the field of ecofeminism,perfectly combining Bakhtin’s dialogue theory with the research of ecofeminist literary theory,and devotes himself to constructing the theory and perspective of ecofeminist literary criticism with dialogue.Under the leadership of Murphy,ecofeminist literary criticism theory has received great attention and development.The first chapter of the thesis starts from the backgrounds of ecofeminism,which is divided into the background of the times and the theoretical background.Era background introduction to the birth of ecofeminism.The theoretical background is that murphy,under the influence of many philosophers’ theories,introduced ecofeminism into the field of literary criticism by combining his own views.In view of the fact that the concept of ecofeminism literary criticism is too long,this paper discriminates between the concepts of ecofeminism and feminism,ecofeminism and ecology,ecofeminism and ecofeminist literary criticism.The second chapter is about Murphy’s theory of ecofeminist literary criticism and its creations.Firstly,Murphy’s theory is summarized.Based on Bakhtin’s dialogue theory,Murphy’s theory interprets the works from the perspective of women and nature.Then it expounds the improvement and development of Murphy’s theory to traditional Feminism,Ecocriticism and Bakhtin’s dialogue theory.For Feminism,the traditional definition of Nature writing objectifies women and nature.Murphy advocates that women use new ways of expression to create literary works,re-write the gender in literary works,restore the dominant position of nature in the text,and expand the space of women’s speech.Then Murphy revised the concept of "sublime" and the image of "gaia" from the perspective of Ecofeminism.Finally,Murphy used the concepts of Bakhtin’s dialogue theory,such as "the other and anotherness ","centripetal force and centrifugal force ",to develop Bakhtin’s dialogue theory to include ecological issues and gender issues.The third chapter of the thesis briefly discusses the criticism and construction of murphy’s ecofeminism literary theory.Ecofeminism is developed on the basis of feminist theory,both of which criticize the patriarchal culture centered on male power.Ecofeminism attempts to reconstruct the new theory,which is a great development and breakthrough to the traditional feminist theory.Murphy integrated the theory of eco-feminism into the pedagogy and created Trickster midwife pedagogy,which benefited all ordinary women from the perspective of education and helped them to emerge from the influence of patriarchy for many years.In terms of teaching content,murphy asked for the inclusion of natural texts written by native American women whose survival wisdom helped women escape years of gender oppression.The fourth chapter discusses the inspiration of murphy’s theory of ecofeminist literature to China’s literature theory construction and ecological construction.Murphy’s theory has the characteristics of transdisciplinarity,transboundary,transcultural and pluralistic dialogism.It will undoubtedly bring new perspectives and methods to the study of literature in China if we learn from its outstanding achievements objectively.At the same time,murphy emphasized "responsibility" and "restoring the subject consciousness of women and nature" for many times in his theoretical research,and the"ecological responsibility consciousness" and "ecological equality consciousness" were emerging for the whole ecological environment.The study of murphy’s ecofeminism literary criticism theory is helpful to the construction and development of ecological civilization in China.The introspection on murphy’s theory can help us to understand the literary theory of eco-feminism more deeply.The conclusion part discusses Murphy’s feelings of "devoting himself to the society"as a scholar.His academic theory inspired the future scholars,and depicted their worries about ecology and their teachings to the future generations.