On The Construction Of Ecocritical Discourse

This dissertation intends to investigate the Western ecocriticism. It has involved the following aspects of this green criticism: the origin, the development, the theoretical basis, the re-fabrication of the literary classics, the textual framework, and the interpretive strategy. Efforts are made to dig into the structure of the newly flourishing critical discourse, identify its status in the theoretical realm, and comment its academic value and realistic significance. With respect to the basic texts and the formal source, ecocriticism can be traced back to the Nature Writing starting at the 17th century and the proto-ecocriticism, which emerged in America and Great Britain more than one century ago. The inheriting relationship between the two schools and ecocriticism has been elaborated in terms of the characteristics of Nature Writing and the perspectives from which the proto-ecocriticism is studied. A general comment on ecocriticism that originated in the 1990s and has been developing up to now is thoroughly conducted. Four criteria of ecocriticism have been shaped in accordance to the vision and approaches of ecocriticism. The demerits of ecocriticism have been demonstrated as well. Through the analysis of the ecocritical discourse, it is stressed that, in essential ways, ecocriticism is different from the previous studies concerned with natural literature. It is an extrinsic criticism, which is aimed at saving the world on the verge of crisis and sets its standpoint at the relationship between literature and environment. Ecocriticism is a part of the radical environmentalism that sweeps across the whole academic circle. With the understanding of the environmental problems being deepened, the environmentalism has undergone a transformation from the technological reform to a cultural revolution. This has engendered the development of ecology as an alternative science respectful for Nature into an interdisciplinary system of ecological theories, which has the constructive postmodernist Zeitgeist. This system advocates a world outlook of organic whole, upholds the internal value of nature, and stresses the man's ethical responsibility for nature. In this way, ecocriticism has obtained the theoretical basis for establishing an ideal social landscape. To enhance the bond between the ecological theories and the literary theories, ecocriticism resumes the resort to the poststructuralist theory. Despite that they share the commonalities with respect to the theoretical background and the starting point, the ecological theory and the poststructuralist theory cannot compromise to each other in their viewpoints about the intra-textual nature and the extra-textual nature. The green linguistic notion, the ecological poetics and the revival of realism are conducive to the coordination of the two natures and the rectification of the extreme anti-theoretical tendency in the academic pursuit. Ecocriticism has assigned itself the re-survey of the literary history and the re-fabrication of the classics as its basic tasks. It has determined the orientation of romantic ecology for the green classics, for the purpose of performing the literary resistance against the mechanical viewpoints of nature through advocating nature as an organic whole. The ecocritics attempt to re-interpret the writing notions of the green classics, urge the surpassing beyond the old pastoralistic writing modes, and promote the aesthetic significance and the spiritual effects of wilderness for sake of the coexistence of man and nature. As far as the text-interpreting strategy is concerned, ecocriticismhas created an environmental framework for texts. When inspecting the relationship between writer, text and the world, it has enlarged the concept of the world as inclusive as encompassing the human beings, the flora and fauna, and the inanimate earth/large ecological circle. Within this framework, three types of environmental texts have been put under the ecocritical survey. Among them there are the non-environmental themed texts, which purely depict the social life. Ecocriticism also concerns itself with the social and historical contexts, and aims to achieve the understanding of the relationship between history, culture and texts from the perspective of new historicism and environmental historicism. Furthermore, ecocriticism has employed "place"as a basic interpretive category. Place and the sense of place have come into the vista of ecocriticism essentially owing to the fact the study of place can disclose the absence of the place sense——an absence engendered by the modern industrialist civilization——from a unique perspective. It is accounted for that the sense of place has aesthetic value and what it means for the human cultural imagination. It follows that the ecocritical emphasis on the sense of place has further defined their anti-mechanist standpoint for viewing the man and the environment as an organic whole. The ecocritics hold that all texts are explicitly or implicitly designated to their respective places, and every reader establishes a certain relation with the place concerned. Furthermore, text-reading cases in ecocriticism have been employed to illustrate the interpretation of the works with or without a given place. The textual readings for revealing the sense of place are similarly targeted: to be committed to the cultural reform and construction for the sake of saving the environment by means of enhancing the readers'sense of place through reading. Finally, it is concluded that ecocriticism is an environmentalist literary discourse which embraces an intense cultural critical spirit,embodies social reform advocacies, and thus has the profound social significance and realistic value. However, the vitality of ecocriticism must be enhanced by increasing literarity. And meanwhile, the ecocritical studies in China are supposed to critically benefit from the Western ecocriticism for the purpose of cultivating its own characteristics in the pursuit.