A Study Of The Writing Of Ecocommunity In E.M. Forster's Works

As one of the greatest British writers in the 20^th century,E.M.Forster(Edward Morgan Forster,1879—1970)is well known for the diversified style and rich texture of his works that convey the complicated and profound meanings.This dissertation is an analysis of Forster's works from the perspective of ecocriticism,a perspective that has not yet drawn enough attention.The ecological concerns constitute a significant element in Forster's works,through which he expresses his reflections on issues such as materialistic progress,industrial development,morality,spirituality,death,and the existence of human being in western capitalist civilization.A study focusing on the ecological concerns in his works would not only help us comprehensively understand Forster's thinking and expand the scope of E.M.Forster scholarship,but also enable us to contemplate the justification of the mode of modern civilization as well as human being's way of existence.Based on the close reading of Forster's works and reviewing the transformation of Forster's thinking,the dissertation employs the terminology of“ecocommunity”to generalize his ecological thinking.With the concept of ecocommunity as the theoretical foundation,the dissertation will analyze Forster's writings from three aspects,that is,the dimension of romantic ecology,the dimension of rootedness in place,and the deterritorial—posthumanistic dimension.The first chapter of the dissertation theorizes the concept of ecocommunity.Human beings are born with a longing for belonging to some communities.Seeking belongingness and identity is closely relevant to the basic issue of existence.The theorization of the notion of ecocommunity aims at exploring a better public spirit and the mode of collective existence.However,the heated discussion about the idea of community in academia is mostly confined within human society without considering the fact that human's existence could by no means be separated from the context or situation where they are embedded.Therefore,when thinking about the possibility of community,we should expand its boundary so as to include the surrounding environment,that is,exploring the possibility of an ecocommunity.The term“ecocommunity”refers to the extensive intra-connection among all the things including human and non-human in the world and their shared future,stressing the wholeness of human being,nonhuman and the ecological environment.It tells us that exploring the question of human's existence must involve the universal connection between human and other existent forms and their shared future,that is,keeping in mind the coexisting and symbiotic relationship as well as the spiritual ties between human and non-human.Drawing on the theoretical resources of ecocriticism,cultural geography,philosophy and physics,this chapter explicitly illustrates the connotations and content of the idea of ecocommunity.The romantic ecological dimension of ecocommunity is manifested in the ecological writing in Forster's Collected Short Stories and novels like A Room with a View,The Longest Journey etc.,and this would be discussed in the second Chapter.Influenced by the ecological views passed from the pastoral of ancient Greek and Rome to romantic literature,E.M.Forster,through the juxtaposition and contrast between the green countryside and the modern industrialized city,laments the disappearing unity between human and nature and conveys his strong feeling of nostalgia for the harmonious country world before industrial revolution.Centered on the collections of his short stories,this chapter analyzes Forster's reflection and criticism on the issues of technocracy,the concept of progress,the expansion of capitalist commercialization as well as English rationalism which destroy people's communion with nature and lead to the loss of the primitive natural community.In his works of this phase,Forster integrates nature writing with Hellenist elements,through which he tries to emphasize the universal spirit or the unified organic life pervading the whole world,which endorses the idea of nature as a whole or the Oneness of the universe.This could be regarded as a transcendental and romantic ecocommunity.Despite its obvious limits of subjective,idealist and unrealistic inclination,this dimension of the concept of ecocommunity is of significance in thinking about the problem of human's existence.The novel Howards End witnesses the second dimension of Foster's thinking on ecocommunity,in which,by unveiling the ideology of pastoral dreams and the danger of the real nature,he endeavors to get rid of the romantic imagination of escaping into an arcadian place,and turns to address the problem of people's real life in the city.Borrowing the critical theory of Western Marxism,Cultural Geography and phenomenology,particularly the key terms of“space”and“place”,the third chapter of the dissertation points out that,Forster criticizes the way of modern city planning based on flat mapping symbols,abstract statistics and efficiency and function merely according to human's purpose,because this way of planning would accelerate the production of rootless and homogeneous city spaces,which cuts off the immediate connections between people and nature and to a great extent results in moral,aesthetic,emotional and spiritual crisis in the modern society.Conversely,Forster attaches great importance to the immediate experiences and the place's significant meaning for human being at the levels of human's imagination,emotion,psychology,spirit and even the authentic existence.Mrs.Wilcox's life of dwelling in Howards End epitomizes the authentic way of human's existence when on one hand,the dweller includes the familiar ecological circle into his own identity and gets satisfied with the feeling of belongingness and emotional attachment with the place;on the other hand,the dweller would not deliberately control the place as an object,but takes care of the essence of other existing forms without subordinating them under his will.In this authentic way of existence,human being and the ecological circle in neighboring area constitute a kind of ecocommunity rooted in place.Chapter Four studies Forster's ecological thinking displayed in A Passage to India,and summarizes it as the deterritorial--posthumanistic dimension of ecocommunity.In this novel,the extremely different ecological landscape in India deepens Forster's understanding on western metaphysics and ponder over its limits.He tries to get out of the boundary of western civilization,which helps him deepen his thinking on problems of connection and existence from a broader perspective.In this way,Forster expresses a profound insight that the planet-scaled ecological system should be treated as the indispensable premise and context when addressing the fundamental problems in human society.Using the theoretical resources of post-structuralism and material ecocriticism as research methods,this chapter states that Forster questions the anthropocentric stance of westerners and their colonialist dominance over the world,and deeply reflects on the philosophical idea of rationalist dualism and hierarchical thinking pattern.Besides,it seems that both human language and the logical thinking lose their power when it comes to the land of India.With the arrangement of the plots of the trip to Malabar,the court trial,and what happens at the Indian religious ceremony,Forster tries to inform us of the intertwined relationship between human and non-human,that is,instead of being independent from each other,all existing forms constitute each other through the constant and dynamic intra-action,which could be considered as an ecocommunity in a broad sense.Forster conveys his thinking on fundamental problems of the mode of western civilization and human's authentic existence through his ecological writing,and implies the dynamic concept of ecocommunity:from the romantic views of ecocommunity stressing oneness and universal energy permeating all the things in the world,to the ecocommunity rooted in place which could be used to resist the alienated existence in modern industrial society,then to the broad deterritorial ecocommunity beyond the western civilization.This dissertation concludes that,in some sense,Forster takes the notion of ecocommunity as the counterplan to cope with the conflicts and problems existing in western capitalist civilization and as the potential alternative solution to change human's alienated situation in the modern world.In terms of the existence problem,only if we take the consciousness of ecocommunity as the premise and basis can we establish a better mode of collective existence for human being.In the modern world with shared risks and future,examining the ecological writing in Forster's works would enable us to deeply reflect the justification of the current civilization mode and human's role and responsibility in worsening ecological situation.The idea of ecocommunity,therefore,is closely pertinent to the real society that we all live in.