The Crisis Of Modern Technology And The Ecological Consciousness: A Cognitive Poetic Reading Of Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut(1922-2007),a famous American novelist,has an extraordinarily important status in contemporary American literature.His works are widely researched on the black humor,postmodernist narrative techniques,anti-war theme,traumatic theme,technological theme,etc..In retrospect of the previous researches both in China and the United States,comparatively,China's academic field of American literature paid little attention to the technological theme and ecological consciousness contained in Vonnegut's novels,and there are few scholars that have explored the novels from the perspective of cognitive poetics.Hence,by combining the two perspectives of Text World Theory in cognitive poetics and the theory of ecocriticism,this thesis takes Cat's Cradle as research subject,analyzes the cognitive models and its prototypical effects,and excavates its speculation on ecological protection and criticism of technology.As a new interpretive approach borrowed from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology,cognitive poetics is interdisciplinary.It not only sheds light on the meaningfulness of specific utterances,but also holistically discusses the relationships between the readers and the literary texts.It can help to make detailed study of the overall meaning of the text,and further foreground the text's theme.Text World Theory,as one component of of cognitive poetics,can achieve an effective communication between readers and the writer who lies in a “split discourse world”,when a literary work is criticized.By integrating the theory of ecocriticism with Text World Theory,the research tries to analyze the cognitive process of the readers and how the readers construct the novel's thematic meaning of “ecological protection and technological speculation”.On one hand,cognitively,the research gives a systematic analysis of the world construction from the discourse-worlds,text-worlds and sub-worlds levels and has the following findings: First,the novel's theme is Vonnegut's concern for ecological protection and specifically his speculation on the abuse of modern technology.The readers' knowledge accumulation in this respect will help them to deal with the themes of this novel.The readers will construct text worlds of ecologically “eschatological scene” caused by the technological disasters according to the textual information and the knowledge in their minds.Second,with the establishment of the text worlds and sub-worlds by readers in the process of reading,readers can thus perceive man's factors in ecological crisis,especially the role of the destructive technologies.The analysis of the construction of text world and sub-text world reflects the status quo of the large-scaled destruction both of man and non-human lives,as well as the emergency of cultivating people's consciousness of ecological protection.On the other hand,interpreting the technological disaster from eco-critical perspective can offer more exhausted evidence to the argument of this thesis,and the two approaches can confirm each other.To sum up,in its global perspective,Cat's Cradle scrutinizes the inner connections in technological invention and practice between the small post-colonial country and the United States.This research holds that technological disasters are one of the chief causes of the global ecological crisis,that textual analysis helps to demystify how to cultivate the ecological consciousness,and that San Lorenzo's imitation of contemporary American technological culture not only is the source of its tragedy,but also has the metaphorical meaning in how to cope with the global ecological crisis.