The Definition of Ecocriticism生态批评的定义

The Definition of Ecocriticism

In Western countries:

(1)The term“literary ecology”, whose emergence symbolizes the germination of ecological criticism, is defined by Joseph W. Meeker as “the study of biological themes and relationships which appear in literary works” and the study of the roles of literature“in the ecology of the human species.” (Meeker, 1974)

(2)“The application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature.”(William Rueckert, “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism,” 1978)

(3)“Ecological criticism means two aspects of research: not only can learn the nature by using any academic methods, but also can study any literature texts? ecological meaning and the relationship between human beings and the nature, even though those texts seems clearly, what they are describing is the non-human world. This new research attitude reflects the modern society?s growing awareness of the importance and the vulnerability of the non-human world.” (Scott Slovic, 1994)

(4)“What then is ecocriticism? Simply put out, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies.” (Cheryll Glotfelty, the first American professor of Literature and the Environment, 1996)

(5) The “study of the relationship between literature and environment conducted in a spirit commitment to environmentalist praxis.”(Laurence Buell, a professor from the English Department of Harvard University, 1995)

(6) The “new environmentalist cultural criticism.” “The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and representations wherever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be taking place, often part-concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of all, ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.”(Richard Kerridge, 1998)

(7) “The study of explicit environmental texts by way of any scholarly approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and humannature relationships in any literary text, even texts that seem, at first glance, oblivious of the nonhuman world.”(Scott Slovic, the first president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), 2000)

(8) “A literature-based approach within a still loosely federated but emerging field designated as ?green cultural studies?.”(Jhan Hochman, 2000)

(9)Greg Garrard gives a broader definition in his book Ecocriticism in 2004. He believes that ecocriticism is the study of the relationship of the human and the non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term ?human?itself. (Garrard 2004)

(10) “ecocriticism has distinguished itself, debates notwithstanding, firstly by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the natural world as an important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic study, and secondly, by its commitment to making connections.\(Simon Estok, 2005) More recently, Estok argues that ecocriticism “is any theory that is committed to effecting change by analyzing the function-thematic, artistic, social, historical, ideological, theoretical, or otherwise-of the natural environment, or aspects of it, represented in documents (literary or other) that contribute to material practices in material worlds.” (Shakespeare and Ecocriticism on p. 16-17)

(11)William Howarth defines ecocriticism as “house judge”. He found that Eco and Critic both derived from Greek, Oikos and Kritis, meaning “house judge”. Then ecocrtic means “a person who judges the merits and faults of writings that depict the effect of culture upon nature, and reversing their harm through political action. (Glotfelty, 1996)

(12)Camilo Gomides has offered a definition: “The field of enquiry that analyzes and promotes works of art which raise moral questions about human interactions with nature, while also motivating audiences to live within a limit that will be binding over generations.”(Camilo Gomides,2006)

(13)“Ecological criticism is a means of the investigation of the literature and other arts from the point of the society and the earth .Literature is not exist in its own isolated field from the outside world, so it limits our discussion about literature in literariness itself, which blocking the crucial relations between literature and other systems, but it is those that contact our values together.” (James S. Hans)

In China

(1)Professor Lu Shuyuan logically divides ecological criticism into three levels: natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology. As to the natural ecology, he takes the physically environment as the research object; his social ecology pays attention to people?s inner emotions and spiritual life.

(2)Wang Yechuan believes that, ecocriticism, on the one hand, focuses on the close relationship between literature and the environment, on the other hand, it pays close

attention to intrinsic connection between literature and social, cultural and spiritual ecologies.

(3)Liu Wenliang emphasize that ecocritism should not just focus on the aspect of natural ecology; it should also pay more attention on spiritual ecology and social ecology which are also of great importance. And in his monograph Ecocriticism: Category and Methodology, he gives a further explanation and insists that ecocriticism borrows viewpoints from modern ecology to observe culture and literature, probing into the relationship of nature and literature, art, culture, society, and mental state of humans.

(4)Hu Zhihong proposed that ecocriticism is a kind of cultural criticism, however, compared with other kinds of cultural criticisms, ecocriticism surpasses the restrictions of single perspectives, such as gender, race, class, earth and so on.(Hu Zhihong, 2006)

(5)Ecocriticism is the literary criticism, which explores the relationship between literature and nature under the guidance of ecologism especially ecological holism. It explores the ideological cultural roots leading to eco-crises through literary research as well as the eco- aesthetic experience and its expression in literary texts. Ecocriticism studies not only ecoliterature, but also any literary pieces concerning the relationship between man and nature. Ecocriticism wants vicissitude of the times, to expose the ecological thoughts and to criticize the non-eco or even anti-eco thoughts and aesthetics from ecological perspective. (Wang Nuo 2011).

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