A Study On Postcolonial Ecocriticism Of Doris Lessing's Space Fictions

Doris Lessing(1919-2013),the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007,has created a large number of excellent literary works.Her space fictions,namely,Canopus in Argos: Archives as very important works,profoundly reveal that the colonial empires wantonly destroy the ecology of the colonies.With the deterioration of global ecology,it is necessary to deal with the relationships between man and man,between man and society as well as between man and nature by studying the ecological destruction in Lessing's space fictions.Based on close reading of Lessing's three space fictions,The Marriages between Zones Three,Four,and Five,The Sirian Experiments and The Making of the Representative for Planet 8,this dissertation intends to expose the social ecology,natural ecology and spiritual ecology of the colonies destructed by the colonial empires from the perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism.First,it analyzes postcolonial criticism of social ecology,which clearly reflects that the colonists discriminate against the oriental races and the colored people in the colonies and the situation that the colonized are stripped of rights by the colonists.Second,it carries out postcolonial criticism of natural ecology.To gain benefits,the colonists wantonly plunder the land resources and animal resources from the colonies,resulting in great damage to the natural ecology and animals of the colonies.Last but not least,it analyzes postcolonial criticism of spiritual ecology.The colonized lack faiths and their spirits are imbalanced,because they are enslaved by the colonists for a long time.Particularly,the women in the colonies are oppressed by the colonists and the men in the colonies,making their spirits abnormal.The study indicates that to get interests,the colonial empires have caused great destruction to the social ecology,natural ecology and spiritual ecology of the colonies,which brings tremendous disasters and pains to the colonized,which undoubtedly violates the ecological concepts of equality and harmony advocated by today's society.Therefore,under nowadays' circumstance of the worsening ecological environment,it warns that human beings need to re-examine their own conducts and build a harmonious ecological society for the overall interests of the ecosystem.Only in thisway can mankind find a “poetic habitat” and achieve harmonious coexistence.