A Construction Of Literary Ecology Upon Reflection Of Ecocriticism

This dissertation is a tentative construction of literary ecology which has emerged as a disciplinary discourse in the development of ecocritical movement. The concept of literary ecology appeared in the 1970s. Many ecocritics have worked on it from different perspectives. The articles and works written to expound it scattered in various directions and topics. It has never been treated as a discourse of discipline as a whole to focus upon, though ecocritics are constructing toward it. This dissertation would undertake the task to integrate the various statements into a wholesome discipline after having studied the representative works of Joseph Meeker, Karl Kroeber, Jonathan Bate, Lawrence Buell as well as various papers in several proceedings.The structure of literary ecology is expected to be erected upon four questions: what is literary ecology, what is its ground, how to read and what to read, what kind of culture value it will contribute.First of all, this dissertation starts with the concept and model of literary ecology. Though literature and ecology address themselves in two different research fields of art and science, they do share some common ground in exploring the relationship between human beings and the beings in the natural world as well as the influence of human behavior upon the natural world. Taking literature as an ecological field, literary ecology is a discipline to study the biological themes and relations and the function that human being can perform in ecology. Joseph Meeker has made a pioneer work in the research of this field. In his study, he found that the tragic spirit dominating the western culture has attributed to the destructive tendency toward ecological balance while the comic spirit which stresses on life, peace and multiple possibilities of surviving has a great significance in maintaining the balance of ecology. In the ecological time, the model of the comedy of survival will offer a new view toward which humanism can reexamine its value alternatives.Secondly, this dissertation goes to expound the ontological basis which motivates the thinking of literary ecology while the relationship between human beings and the beings of the natural world are studied. In both westernand Chinese philosophy, there can be found ecological resources of thinking that human being and the beings of the natural world belong to one holistic ecological system. The foundation for the poetic ecological system of literary ecology can trace back to Spinoza's philosophy of oneness of nature and God and that of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu's unity between man and nature. The meditation of Zen and Buddhism also helps to promote the thinking of self realization in the ontological basis. Thus, literary ecology would take the unity between human beings and beings in the nature as the basic motive to approach the imaginative representation of human and nature in order to find the possibility and inevitability of unifying and harmonizing the relationship and balance between human being and the natural world.Thirdly, this dissertation tends to discuss the green reading of literary texts which can be considered the cause of material for the construction of literary ecology. In the course of green reading, according to Lawrence Buell, it tends to break through the traditional reading convention and to open the ecological reading dimension. While the biological themes and relations and the function of human behavior in the ecology are examined, nature should be viewed as a presence rather than as an absence as it used to be. The green reading and the study of the possibility for unification of human and nature will help to revive the identification of nature and embark a new pastoral trip in search of the harmonious relationship between culture and nature.Finally, this dissertation comes to the construction of pastoral value, which is inherited from the romantic spirit and ecology-oriented thinking of culture. The literary ecology should end up in the linkage between natural and cultural process. Both Wordsworth and Thoreau...