Ecotopian Vision In Calvino’s The Baron In The Tress

Italo Calvino is one of the most important Italian writers of the 20th century.The Baron in the Trees is the most Utopian work of Our Ancestors trilogy. A twelve-year old boy climbs into the trees to live there for fifty years, building a utopian world in the trees.This thesis discusses how Calvino builds an ecological utopia by literary imagination. As an ecological study, this thesis constitutes three dimensions (natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology), articulating the harmonious ecological relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and self.Chapter One reviews the Utopian tradition, comparing the essential characteristics and individual difference of utopian ideas, aiming to study the history and connotations of ecological utopia.Chapter Two discusses Calvino’s ecological ethics and ecological aesthetics, which are "there is an essential parity between everything that exists" and "to give speech to that which has no language." These are the cornerstones of Calvino’s ecological utopian ideas and imagination.Chapter Three focuses on The Baron in the Trees, and finds out that Calvino’s ecological utopia is constructed from three-dimensional space, multiple subjects and rule of inhabitation.Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees has a forward-looking significance to the future development of literature and society. The image of the baron shows a balance between the active and passive attitudes. His ecological utopia provides a possible existence scenario for human beings.