Ecocriticism is a discourse of discourse. Most people agree with Cheryl Grottefelty’s definition: ‘Ecological criticism is a criticism of the relationship between literature and the natural environment.’ It is generally believed that the concept of ‘ecological criticism’ by American scholar William Rucker Mann first proposed in 1978 that his article ‘Literature and Ecology: An Ecological Criticism Experiment’ was published in the 1978 Winter of the Iowa Review. The concept of ‘ecological criticism’ clearly combines ‘literature and ecology.’ ‘. In 1992, the ‘Literature and Environmental Research Society’ was established at the University of Nevada. In 1994, Klober published a monograph entitled ‘Ecological Criticism: Romantic Imagination and Ecological Consciousness’, which advocated ‘ecological literary criticism or ‘ecological oriented criticism.’ The first seminar was held at the University of Colorado in 1995. Part of the conference was officially published under the title ‘Reading the Land: A New Trend in Literary and Environmental Studies’ (1998). Since then, the works of ecocriticism have sprung up in the literary world.
In 1996, the first episode of the ecological criticism in the United States, the Ecocriticism Reader, was published by Grotefelty and Frome. Its purpose was to ‘discuss ecological and ecological literary theory, literary ecological criticism and ecological literature separately.’ Criticism makes ecocriticism more characteristic and paradigm of literary criticism. In the introduction, Cheryll Glotfelty defines ecocriticism: “Ecological criticism studies the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from the perspective of gender consciousness, Marxist criticism The mode of production and the conscious of the economic class are brought into text reading, and ecocriticism uses an earth-centered approach to studying literature.’
In 1998, the first collection of ecological criticism in the UK, ‘Writing Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature’ was published in London. It was divided into three parts: ecological criticism theory, history of ecological criticism, and contemporary ecological literature. This book, edited by Kriging and Semels, argues: ‘Ecological criticism should explore environmental concepts and environmental performance in literature.’
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The ‘New Literature History’ in the summer of 1999 is the special title of ecocriticism. A total of ten articles on ecological criticism were published. The ecological criticism works published in 2000 mainly include the essays edited by Professor Murphy. ‘Field’, ‘The New Collection of Ecological Criticism’ edited by Tolmech, etc., ‘The Song of the Earth’ by Bate. In 2001, Boyle published a new book, Writing for a Dangerous World: Literature, Culture, and the Environment in the United States and Other Countries. Mazel edited and published The Century of Ecological Criticism. In early 2002, the University of Virginia Press launched the first ecocritic series: ‘Ecological Critics Exploration Series.’ The ‘Ecological Criticism’ published by Glenn Love in the United States in late 2003 and the ‘Ecological Criticism’ published by Greg Garrard of the United Kingdom in August 2004
The definition of ‘ecological criticism’ is very different from others. Michel P. Blanche and others in ‘Reading the Earth’ said: ‘The implicit (and usually explicitly included) among the many ways of this new criticism is a call for cultural change. It is not just a means of analyzing the nature of literature, it also means moving towards a more biological center of the worldview, an extension of ethics that extends the humanity of the global community to accommodate non-human life. Form and physical environment. Just as feminist and African-American literary criticism calls for a cultural change that seeks to promote a more inclusive worldview by exposing the narrowness of early ideas, ecocriticism examines our view of the natural world. The narrowness of cultural assumptions limits our ability to look at an ecologically sustainable human society and call for cultural change.’
Lawrence Buell, a professor of English at Harvard University, puts the ecological spirit into a deeper level of literary and literary theory in his book Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Natural Writing, and the Composition of American Culture. In this book, ‘A Milestone of Ecological Literary Criticism,’ Boyle points his finger at a major tendency in literature and criticism since the 20th century: the loss of the dimension of reference to the real world. Buil believes that ecocriticism is usually carried out in the spirit of an environmental movement practice. In other words, ecocriticists not only see themselves as people engaged in academic activities. They are deeply concerned about the current environmental crisis. Many people are also involved in various environmental improvement movements. They also believe that humanities, especially literary and cultural studies, can contribute to understanding and saving the environmental crisis. Ecological criticism is interdisciplinary.
Promoting aesthetic formalism or disciplinary self-sufficiency is not an ecological critic. Ecocriticism draws interpretation models from scientific research, human geography, developmental psychology, social anthropology, philosophy (ethics, epistemology, phenomenology), history, religion, and gender and ethnic studies. The result is clearly a huge difference in methodology between different ecocriticists. As the ecological movement grows, the meaning of the term ‘ecological criticism’ becomes more and more complicated. Originally used it was a literary scholar who studied natural writing and natural poetry, focusing on the non-human world and its relationship with human beings. Correspondingly, the theoretical hypothesis of early ecocriticists is also simpler than today. For example, many early ecocriticists strongly opposed modern textuality theory and declared that the core task of ecocriticism is to emphasize that literature should re-engage readers with nature.
Generally speaking, ‘ecological criticism’ is a literary theory criticism method that enters ecological problems from the perspective of literary criticism. On the one hand, it must solve the deep relationship between literature and the natural environment, on the other hand, it should pay attention to literary art and social ecology, cultural ecology and spirit. The intrinsic link of ecology. Ecocriticism focuses on how the text rejects, displays, or ignites the nature of human love for life: “The inner human tendencies that are concentrated in life processes or similar life processes that inspire our imagination and emotions in connection with the non-human natural world. After the sense of security, the anxiety of modernity, the fragmentation and chaos of postmodernism, writers began to explore new ways for human beings to belong to the world and explore new ways to develop a cautious and reciprocal ethic between us and nature.
An important driving force of ecocriticism is to position, open and discuss this desire for expression in literary form.’ Ecocriticism uses modern ecological perspectives to examine the relationship between literary art and nature, society, and human mental state. Using literature to think about narrative means to explore ecological culture, to explore the poetic existence of human beings in the world, to think about the relationship between man, nature, art and criticism – reflection on the relationship between human and nature conquest and revenge, and criticism of ecological art The Determination of Humanistic Principles, the Problem of Modern Subject Center and the New Structure of Multi-Value Deduction. It is at this point that I agree with the editor of Reading The Earth: ‘An important role of ecologically sensitive literary criticism is that it has a potential to promote the development of a deeper ecological humanity for all members of humanity. Literacy.’
In my opinion, ecocritic has the following basic characteristics:
First, ecocriticism focuses on the study of natural ecology and spiritual ecology in literature, and strives to present the complex movements of human and natural world in the works, and to grasp the interaction between literature and the natural environment. The frequency of use of ecocriticism in literary criticism has increased and the scope has been expanding. Therefore, ecocriticism has been accepted as a dictionary of Western literary terminology as an important term of literary theory.
Second, ecocriticism can reinterpret the classics of traditional literature from the perspective of ecological culture, interpret the hidden ecological and cultural significance and ecological aesthetic significance, and re-establish people and self, people and others, people and society, people and nature, The poetic aesthetic relationship between man and the earth.
Third, ecocriticism maintains a ‘political correct’ position on the subjectivity of human beings in artistic creation – neither an anthropocentrism nor an absolute naturalist position, but a harmony between man and nature. Human beings have changed from ‘self-awareness’ to ‘ecological awareness.’ Human beings and the earth are the life-coincidence relationship. Human beings are no longer the masters of nature, but a member of the earth species, living and dying with other members of the natural world.
Fourth, ecocriticism links literary research with life sciences, studies literature and nature from two fields, and focuses on the literary level from the perspective of human social development and ecological environment change, thus making ecocriticism have interdisciplinary characteristics of literature. Ecocriticism is the literary reflection of human beings after the ecological disaster. It is the literary artist’s reorientation of human beings’ position on the earth and the re-liquidation of the modernities of the West by the thinkers.
Ecological Criticism inherits the ideology of the Green Revolution when it observes the phenomenon of ecological culture, emphasizing that it cannot deviate from the literary spirit and literary discourse, but should try to develop discourse narrative in the literary text form and artistic technique as much as possible, through ‘literature ‘The form of writing is beautiful to reflect the spirit of ecological culture.’
Sixth, the content of ecocritic requires a study of the past and future state of human beings from the dual perspective of the essence of life and the earth. This perspective links the literary studies that have already flowed into formalism with the crisis of the Earth’s survival. From then on, literature can abandon the formalistic word game, revitalize it from the various literary criticism discourses of language disintegration, and re-examine the meaning of ‘human’ life and the ecological meaning of ‘world’.
On the whole, ecocriticism regards the relationship between literature and the natural environment as the field of its own research. On the one hand, it must be a ‘literary’ study, on the other hand, it must touch on the ‘ecological’ problem. This integration of ‘literature’ and ‘ecological’ is different from other literary criticism or literary theories. Ecocriticism is full of hope for the future of mankind, and it constantly calls for a poetic and optimistic attitude towards survival, and rejects the ‘despair of the future’, thus showing the optimistic spirit of ecocriticism.
Of course, any new theory emerges, there are incomplete and even theoretical blind spots, and ecocriticism is no exception. This new mode of criticism has attracted widespread attention in the literary world. Dana Phillips puts forward some objections to ecocriticism in the book The Truth of Ecology. He believes that ecocriticism is an old bottled new wine. There is no innovation in theory, but a fashionable term is used to publicize it; ecological criticism has not yet formed. The lack of theoretical basis of the self-contained theoretical system makes it merely a narrative discourse of passion; ecological literary criticism is full of ambition, and it is difficult to digest the rather complicated evolutionary theory and ecological theory into literary criticism. However, in any case, ecocriticism is still coming out of the ‘text slogan’ and ‘discourse game’ of Western literary theory. It is an undeniable fact that it has begun to lean over and cultivate the dead and burial land and face and care about the real dilemma of human existence.
