Study On Robert Frost's Ecopoetics

Robert Frost is an American poet enjoying high reputation in the 20 th century. Most of his poems are created under the background of the countryside scenes and natural scenes in the New England, thus they are full of local characteristics. Frost is skillful in depicting and using the natural landscapes in his poems which contain profound and thought-provoking philosophic thoughts. As a result, many scholars have a keen interest in Frost's poetry, and conduct in-depth studies on the theme, poetic art and philosophy of his poems. With the aggravation of the ecological crisis, the researchers gradually began to explore the ecological thoughts contained in Frost's poems, and achieved abundant achievements. However, most of the researches are still confined to the shallow discussion of the relation between man and nature. Rare studies make a comprehensive and deep ecological interpretation of Frost's poetry. Based on the relevant theories of eco-criticism, this thesis adopts interdisciplinary research and intensive reading of the text to expound the profound ecological thoughts, ecological view of language and eco-aesthetic experiences reflected in Frost's poetry.Firstly, in terms of the profound ecological thoughts of Frost, they mainly include pursuit of the harmony between nature and man, reflection on the industrialization, and construction of ecological identity. His ecological thoughts show a gradual development process. In his early times, Frost mainly showed sincere love and respect for the nature and advocate to live in a simple way. In addition, he strove to depict the poetic dwelling of human beings. However, the rapidly developing industrialization gradually destructed the harmony relationship between man and nature. In view of the destruction of industrialization, Frost shows advanced ecological consciousness. His angst can be seen from his description of the separation of nature from humans and the alienation of humans. Moreover, Frost made attempt in his poems to reproduce the harmonious relationship between human and nature so as to save the alienated spirit of humans and recover the coexistence between man and nature. In his later years, Frost had an further understanding on the ecological identity of humans and put forward to establishing the ecological identity of humans. The formation of the sense of place to the New England made him realize that the human beings also have an ecological identity in addition to the social identity. Based on the recognition of the ecological identity, he was conscious of the great destructive power of the anthropocentrism thoughts, especially the rational thinking of the modern science. As a result, Frost advocated the eco-centrism thoughts considering nature equal to humans, so as to establish the ecological identity of humans.Secondly, the poetic language of Frost is mainly discussed from the authentic description of nature, the auditory reproduction of nature and visual presentation of nature so as to have a comprehensive understanding of Frost's ecological view on poetic language. Frost uses simple but seriously considered and selected colloquial words to create poems, which ensures the truly reflection of the nature appearance. In addition, his holistic creation thinking establishes close relationship among the words in his poems,showing the complicate relations among things. Therefore, his poems can also reveal the internal rules of nature. In terms of the rhythm, Frost tries to reproduce the presence of nature in his poems. By using flexible meter as well as different rhyme combinations,Frost fully activates the readers' auditory organs, and successfully reproduces the nature with the auditory effect of the poems. Finally, Frost uses the collocation of different nature images to present the internal energy cycle of nature. In addition, he also combines nature images with mental images to show the visual image of nature from the dynamic scene and the still scene.Finally, the eco-aesthetic experiences of Frost can be divided into the primitive beauty of nature, the integrative beauty of nature and the beauty of engagement between man and nature. For Frost, the nature has its own primitive beauty which is not depended on the will and demands of humans. The primitive beauty of the nature is complicated and dynamic, showing both the life vitality and the indifference of the nature. Then,eco-aesthetic also requires to appreciate the integral value of individual objects in the ecosystem. The integrative beauty shows the construction value of the natural objects to the ecosystem. In the poems, Frost not only shows the integrative beauty of the natural environments and dying things, but also depicts the morbid beauty caused by the greed of humans. Finally, Frost shows the beauty of engagement between man and nature. In his poems, this kind of beauty can be appreciated from either observing the naturalphenomenon or actively engaging in the spiritual communication with the nature through doing farm works. And he also points out that the appreciation of the beauty of engaging in nature actually is the bidirectional flow of energy. This kind of energy flow is depended on the ecological consciousness and reaches the peak in the merge point of the engagement between man and nature.In the conclusion part, the paper put forward to the main views. Frost's poems interpret profound ecological thoughts, show unique ecological view on language and present rich eco-aesthetic experiences. In sum, Frost's poems show his deep concern for the human survival and ardent hope for a harmonious relationship between man and nature.