From Anthropocentrism To Ecocentrism

Ernest Hemingway is considered as one of the most canonical American authors, and his reputation in the American literary canon seems locked in for the twentieth century. It seems that there is nothing more to be said about Hemingway's work. Hemingway's posthumous books supply previously unpublished materials and offer new sources to Hemingway study, though Under Kilimanjaro is the latest, which was published in 2005.Ecocriticism is a literary critical school rising in 1970s, with the increasing intensification of current ecological crisis, and anxiety of human beings over their living surroundings. Ecocriticism takes anthropocentrism as its target and carries on literary studies by studying how nature is represented in literary works, exposing species discrimination, reconsidering literary works from the perspective of nature to dig out ecological wisdom, criticizing anti-ecological literature, and constructing ecocritical theory based on ecological philosophy and ecological ethics.The emergence of ecocriticism opens up a new field for literary study and provides us with a new method of reading literature, which consequently enables us to gain a different insight into Hemingway and his works.With ecocriticism as the theoretical framework, the thesis explores Hemingway's ecological views by contrastive analysis of his two nonfictions of hunting:Green Hills of Africa and Under Kilimanjaro. Through the research the author of the thesis wishes to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of Hemingway's ecological views, and to reveal the shift of his ecological views during the intervening twenty years from writing Green Hills of Africa to writing Under Kilimanjaro.The thesis consists of three parts:the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The introduction begins with the research background and literature review, and then explains why the author of the thesis chooses to study Hemingway's two nonfictions of hunting from the perspective of ecocriticism, and finally introduces the questions discussed in the thesis.The body of the thesis is made up of three chapters. Chapter One is the general survey of ecocriticism and some of the ecological conceptions applied in the thesis. Chapter Two focuses on the discussion of Hemingway's anthropocentric views in Green Hills of Africa by analyzing his attitudes toward trophy hunting, animals, Africa and Africans. Chapter Three is devoted to the discussion of Hemingway's ecocentric views in Under Kilimanjaro through contrastive analysis of his different attitudes toward trophy hunting, animals, Africa and Africans.The last part presents the conclusion of the thesis:Hemingway's ecological views have shifted from anthropocentrism in Green Hills of Africa to ecocentrism in Under Kilimanjaro.