Environmental Imagination

As one of the important critics and leading figures in the field of ecocritcal studies, Lawrence Buell and his trilogy of ecocritical studies have great influence on the studies of literature and environment. Throughout the trilogy of his ecocritical study, Buell has developed a unique ecocritical discourse which focuses on "environmental imagination". Focusing on the trilogy of his ecocritical works, this thesis tries to position Buell's theory as it relates to the wide diversity of globally expanding ecocritical studies and makes a comprehensive statement about Buell's ecocritical theory.Efforts are made to interpret the major characteristics of his ecocritical discourse, indentify its status in the theoretical realm, and comment on its academic value and realistic significance.The dissertation consists of seven chapters, with the introduction describing the starting point and significance of the dissertation, the present condition of the study on ecocriticism in China and the research method and creative characteristic of the dissertation.In order to help the readers understand Buell's theoretical development and its origins, his life and education, as well as his academic career and achievements, are also briefly presented.Chapter one elaborates on Buell's most influential theories of ecocriticism which focus on The Environmental Imagination with the aim of Writing for an Endangered World. Buell argues that environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination and that a reinvention of vision and values is the key to environmental amelioration. Buell has an extended investigation of pastoral, representing environment and cultural formations involved in producing the "green Thoreau". Buell's five focuses are: one, imagine the environment as more than a setting for human events, two, recognize Thoreau as exemplar of the environmental imagination in all of its facets, three, recover neglected nonfictional environmental texts, four, revise readings and critical/theoretical practices and finally, investigate how texts can affect human behavior.Chapter Two focuses on Buell's ecocritcal practice. Buell argues that environmental texts can act as carriers or agents of ecocentricity, which are realized in specific ways. Buell discusses a series of imaginative structures cogently expressed in Western and more especially in American writing, including environmental literature's arrangement of the "human" and the "world". He includes some of the principle ways in which creative writers have perceived nature's structure, their notions and reflects on why these particular figurations - season, place, catastrophe have been so compelling.Chapter Three is about Buell's text-interpretation strategy. Place and the sense of place have come into the vista of Buell's ecocriticism. Buell argues that all texts are explicitly or implicitly designated to their respective places, and every reader establishes a certain relation with the place. An account of specific conditions can lead to an awakened place-awareness that is also mindful of its limitations and respectful that place molds us as well as vice versa.Chapter Four follows the development of Buell's ecocriticism focusing on one of his trilogies of ecocriticism, Writing for an Endangered World. As Buell points out, one of the book's main purposes is to put "green" and "brown" landscapes in conversation with one another. The environmental crisis threatens all landscapes- wild, rural, suburban, and urban. In Writing for an Endangered World Buell indicates that environmental writers depart from their pastoral traditions to address issues like toxic discourse, environmental justice, reinhabitation, the rights of the natural world, which fuse the landscapes of wilderness and technology into one like-it-or-not environmental web. Buell points out that literature and environment studies must make their case for the indispensableness of physical environment as a shaping force in human art and experience, and how such an aesthetic works.Chapter Five intends to widen the research vision by way of making a comparative study on Buell and Jonathan Bate's ecocritical discourses. By investigating Buell's ecocritical discourse about "environmental imagination" and Bate's ecocritical discourse about "romantic ecology", the main characteristics and multi-angled critical thoughts of critical discourse are both explored. Comments on their important contributions to ecocriticism are included.Keeping the various difficulties with ecocriticism in general in mind, the last chapter analyzes how ecocriticism could step out of the present dilemma and call itself into full play in the field of literary and cultural criticism. Some challenges of ecocriticism in future are also presented.