Study On Hong Ying’s Novels From The Perspective Of Environmental Criticism

Hong Ying,a Chinese writer living in Britain,was born in 1962 in a poor family in Nan’an district,Chongqing city.After living in the shabby Nan’ an district for 18 years,she began to roam around and moved to England in 1991.Hongying has began to publish novels since 1988,and has published more than ten works so far.In these novels,Chongqing and the Yangtze River are the two geographical settings that appear repeatedly.Daughter of The River,Good children of The Flower,and The Cry of Peacock are all set in Chongqing and the Yangtze River.Although British Lover and Shanghai Trilogy don’t involve in Chongqing,they also tell about people and things around the Yangtze River.However,the nostalgia for hometown in Hong Ying’s novels is different from common narratives about hometown.Immigration life endows the writer different perspectives to write about the home in the memory.Based on the theory of environmental criticism put forward by Lawrence Buell,this paper analyzes the description of hometown in Hong Ying’s novels,and tries to explore the performance and function of environment in her novels as well as Hong Ying’s attitude towards industrial civilization and modernity as an overseas Chinese writer.The thesis is divided into four chapters:The first chapter is the introduction,a detailed review of the existing research about Hong Ying’s works.This chapter explains the origin and significance of the topic,and make further limit on the specific research object,relevant theoretical category of this paper.The second chapter discusses Hong Ying’s attitude to modernity.Firstly,it discusses Hong Ying’s different attitudes towards lust and desire.On the one hand,Hong Ying affirms the reasonable desire of human being as a natural person;on the other,she is alert to the ever-expanding desire of human being in the process of modernization.Secondly,it discusses Hong Ying’s worries about the urban environment and her reflections on the relationship between humans and the city.The third chapter discusses the consciousness of "place" embodied in Hong Ying’s novels,which mainly analyzes Hongying’s complex emotion on the natural and humanistic environment of her hometown Chongqing in her novels.She still cares about the nature and social ecology of Chongqing after she has gone abroad.The persistent attention to the homeland is the "place attachment" complex mentioned by Gary Snyder in his thought about "place".Secondly,it also analyzes Hongying’s environmental imagination of Shanghai and even the whole world.The goal is to explore the interaction and influence between Hongying and the different places.The fourth chapter discusses the thought of Environmental Justice in Hong Ying’s novels,which mainly analyzes the oppression that women and ordinary people at the bottom of the society suffer in various social environments in Hong Ying’s novels.Conclusion summarizes the expression of environment in Hong Ying’s novels and the significance of Hong Ying’s environmental writing.