A Study Of Robert Louis Stevenson's Works In The Perspective Of Ecocriticism

As one of the most important literary critical approach of the twentieth century, ecocriticism came into being out of the background of the worsening global ecological crisis and environmental degradation. Laying stress on nature protection, with ecological consciousness awakening as its goal, ecocriticism is a study of the relationship between literature and environment. The critical strategy of ecocriticism is to subvert the root cause of environmental crisis--anthropocentrism. By criticizing anthropocentrism and reinterpreting and excavating the ecological thinking hidden in literary works, ecocriticism aims at establishing a harmonious nature-and-man relationship and a society with new ecological outlook and sustainable development.Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the greatest writers in the British literature history. Besides the well known children literature he has created during his short writing career, he has also left a great number of travel works and science fictions. And in these works, we can find that Stevenson devoted a lot of space to describe the relationship between man and nature. This makes it possible for a study to analyze Stevenson from the perspective of ecocriticism. Setting Stevenson in the framework of ecocriticism, exploring the natural outlook embodied in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, An Inland Voyage, In the South Seas and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, considering the historical background and comparing him with his contemporary nature writers, this thesis tends to provide a new perspective for the study of Stevenson and establish his status of as a nature writer.This paper consists of six chapters, including an introduction, the body and a conclusion. The body is divided into four chapters. The introduction part gives a brief introduction to Stevenson's life, his works, the previous academic researches on Stevenson both at home and abroad, and the feasibility and significance of this study. Chapter two reviews and introduces the theory of ecocriticism, a comparatively new literary criticism that came into being in the 1990s. In this chapter, the birth and developing process background of ecocriticism, some relative important conception such as anthropocentrism, deep ecology, and social ecology will be presented. Chapter three investigates Stevenson's examination on the natural world. By describing nature's subjectivity and value, Stevenson criticizes the anthropocentric world outlook and subverts the dichotomy between man and nature. Holding that nature is the mother of humanity and human is part of nature, Stevenson puts forward his thinking on ecology that man and nature should keep harmonious interactions with each other. What's more, Stevenson severely attacks the side-effects of industrial civilization and the bad influence that extreme scientism exerts on human nature. Chapter four mainly introduces the natural outlook of some other ecological writers of Stevenson's time and compares them with Stevenson in order to study him from a lateral angle. Chapter five explores the evolution of views on nature in the western history which provides the historical background for Stevenson's nature writing. The last chapter of the paper comes to the conclusion. Though the theory of ecocritisim had not come into existence in Stevenson's time, the natural thoughts that are reflected in his works are in accordance with this newly born literary critical school. In this sense, Stevenson is one of forerunners in the field of ecological thinking and it is no exaggeration that his ecological outlook is a precious wealth for modern people.