A Study Of Giono's Ecological Space

Eulogized as the "forerunner of French ecological literature," Jean Giono is one of the most noted 20-century French writers.His works often use Provence as their background and construct an ecological space through assorted ecological images and symbols in nature.Nature becomes a medium to convey his mediation on life.By entwining closely nature and human world in his literary creations,he expresses a deeply philosophical relationship between nature and mankind.This dissertation scrutinizes such representative works of Giono's as Colline,Un de Baumunes,Regain(Trilogie de Pan),le Grand Troupeau,le Chant du monde,Que ma joie demeure,le Hussard sur le toit,Un roi sans divertissement,Provence.Aided with the theory of literary semiotics,it delves into the deeper structure of these texts from imagistic semiotics and narrative semiotics,in an attempt to explicate how various natural symbols including mankind participate in the construction of ecological space in the form of literary semiotics.By analyzing how contemporary French writers exemplified by Giono respond to environmental crisis,this dissertation widens the universality of ecological literary studies.This paper comprises of seven sections shown in the form of preface,succeeding five chapters and conclusion.The preface carries out a general review of the existing scholarship on the subject under study both at home and abroad,its significance,theoretical approach and the originality.This part makes a comprehensive review of the domestic and overseas Giono scholarship by commenting on his literary creations throughout life.The originality lies in its fusion of ecology and literary semiotics,with the latter as the fundamental approach,putting literary imagism into the zone of ecological critique,so as to probe into the miscellaneous textural system and analyze the components of ecological space therein.Constituted by the imagistic and narrative semiotics,the semiotic system connects the internal and external of literary studies,thereby reaching explicitly the core value of spatial ecology,and demonstrating the features and significance of the ecological space in Giono's texts.Such interpretation avoids the generalizations of traditional ecological literary studies,facilitating a better and quintessential apprehension of life origin,natural environment,and ecological harmony.The five main chapters deal firstly with the temporal narrative semiotics comprised of "day and night" and "four seasons," as well as the spatial narrative semiotics seen in "city" and "nature(countryside)," endeavoring to exhibit the writer's ecological values in the dimensions of time and space.Secondly,by analyzing such biological images as "animal," "plant," "animalcule" as well as non-biological images of the "earth," "air," "water," and "fire," the dissertation explores how natural elements construct the ecological space,evincing the ecological philosophy of harmony and interaction between mankind and natural elements.Furthermore,the anatomizing of the "individual" and "community," as "human be:ings" rank as the "fifth element," in the texts lays bare their ecological value in ecological space and the concrete actions they take in confronting the environmental crisis.The last part studies integrally Giono's textual manifestations of spatial ecology,from the physical semiotic construction to the metaphysical cogitation on ecological civilization,offering exegesis to his narrative style in order to grasp the literariness,organism,and integrity of ecological space microscopically and macroscopically.In the concluding chapter,this dissertation summarizes the different styles in the early and later career of Giono's ecological writings,highlighting the consistent subjective role of mankind and nature in his construction of literary space while uncovering his essential purport in such construction as advocating life origin and a return to nature.In effect,Giono's works put forth questions on the stance that mankind should take towards nature during the process of profit-craving exploitation.The depth,width,and creativity of his writings take root in his philosophical thinking on nature,environment and ecology,on the basis of pluralism.As human society and natural environment are embroiled in serious crisis,an investigation of Giono's works possesses new consequence in reality,which also makes a consideration of this dissertation under preparation.In the meantime,this dissertation,based on its exploration of Giono's spatial ecology,systematically analyzes his ecological view in his literary creations.Such a comprehensive explication of the pivotal role Giono's ecological thought plays in the evolutionary history of the entire French ecological writing would facilitate Chinese scholars' understanding of French writer's response to ecological crisis through literature,which shall become illuminating to the development of harmonious ecological civilization in China.