Ecocriticism Of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!

Willa Cather is a novelist of the first rank in American literature. Her reputation largely rests on her novels about immigrants on Nebraska prairie and the American Southwest. O Pioneers! is regarded as Cather's first novel of the frontier, and her first successful novel as well. In the novel Cather expresses her deep love of the land and her concern for the relationship between the land and our human beings. O Pioneers! emerges as ecologically conscious text when it is read against the background of Deep Ecology, professed by Arne Naess, Fritjof Capra and Aldo Leopold.With the advent of ecological crisis and in the context of globalization, the study of literature is combined together with the study of ecology. Ecocriticism, when applied in literature, is to study the relationship between literature and the physical environment. One important motive of ecocriticism is to revitalize literary study and help address some of the pressing questions concerning our global and local ecology.This thesis is an attempt to study Willa Cather's O Pioneers! from the aspect of ecocriticism. It consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The Introduction gives a brief summary of Willa Cather and current studies on her. It provides a glimpse of the origin and development of ecocriticism as well as ecological consciousness in Willa Cather's early life.Chapter One focuses on character analysis in O Pioneers!. The ecological consciousness in Alexandra Bergson and Ivar is presented.Chapter Two analyzes ecocentrism embodied in the natural world in...