To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Ecocriticism.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Ecocriticism'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Ecocriticism.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Parham, John. "Gerard Manley Hopkins and ecocriticism." Thesis, University of East London, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.298082.
Full text
2
Matts, Timothy. "Violent signs : ecocriticism and the symptom." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2011. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/19520/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis recommends that the ‘ecocritical’ turn in American Literary Scholarship be brought into contact with ‘symptomnal’ forms of ideology critique, namely after the post-Althusserian thinking of Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižek and Deleuze-Guattari. This recommendation is made on the basis that the ecocritical turn has neglected to apprise itself of a thoroughgoing prehistory; by bringing together the lessons of Marx and Lacan, post-Althusserian thinking enables us to address the disavowal of formal and theoretical concerns constitutive of first-wave ecocriticism, and to acknowledge this as symptomatic of North American cultural and political pluralism more broadly. Where such disavowal promoted a widespread rejection of poststructural theories of immanence in the Americanist milieu of the 1980s, I consider how it effectively blocked psychoanalytic and Marxist approaches to literary form and human subjectivity. Following an initial examination of ecocriticism after Althusser and Balibar’s thesis on ‘symptomnal reading’, my study goes on to reassert issues of subjectivity for ecocriticism. Žižek’s subjectivist approach to ideology critique enables a diagnosis of the legacy of modern epistemology and thereafter analysis of ecocritical motivations of sublime aesthetics. By pursuing broader, ‘valetudinary’ issues in relation to literary form, the latter half of the thesis exceeds the former’s emphasis on ideology critique, moving instead to engage the post-subjectivist, ‘schizoanalytic’ project of Deleuze and Guattari. Predicated upon an a-subjective philosophy of differential relations, schizoanalysis enables us to reappraise eco-literary and eco-philosophical concerns, chiefly after post-symptomatological analyses of the relationship between high modern literature, pre-personal affect and the ‘eco-social’ coding of desire. It is in this way that I assert the ‘body without organs’ as the privileged clinical figure with which to address eco-social organisation, and thus, exceed the subjectivist logic of the symptom.
3
Dixon, Peter. "Ecocriticism, Geophilosophy, and the [Truth] of Ecology." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/19901.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis addresses the question posed to ecocriticism by Dana Phillips in his iconoclastic The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture, and Literature in America: “What is the truth of ecology, insofar as this truth is addressed by literature and art?” by examining how ecocriticism has, or has failed to, contextualize ecocritical discourse within an ecological framework. After reviewing the current state of ecocriticism and its relationship with environmentalism, the thesis suggests that both rely on the same outmoded, inaccurate and essentially inutile ecological concepts and language, and argues for a new approach to ecocriticism that borrows its concepts and language from the geophilosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The thesis concludes with a reassessment of the work of Barry Lopez, showing how his fiction, when viewed through the lens of geophilosophy, does not support essentialist notions of nature, but rather works to articulate a world of multiplicities, and new modes of becoming.
4
Barker, Anna. "Green fiction : ecocriticism of the contemporary novel." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2016. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/32673/.
Full text
5
Lidstrom, Susanne Irene. "Experiments in ecocriticism : Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2013. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/experiments-in-ecocriticism(bad8185a-54b6-435f-9c56-583e3318663c).html.
Full textAbstract:
This is a reading of two Anglophone poets, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. The analysis is grounded in 'ecocriticism'. More than just critical analysis, ecocriticism seeks to draw out the relationship between poets and their environments. On a more general basis, ecocriticism addresses the relationship between nature and culture in a wider sense. This thesis follows both these strains. It brings out ideas about nature-human relations expressed in Hughes's and Heaney's poems. It also uses those same poems to make visible ways in which a certain set of ecocritical theories illuminate ideas, positions and developments with regard to the relationship between nature and culture, especially as framed by environmental crisis. It is the ambition of the thesis to pursue these two aims simultaneously, and to say something both about Hughes and Heaney as eco-poets, and about theoretical developments in the ecocritical field. These distinguished poets, a Nobel Prize-winning Irishman, Seamus Heaney (1939-), and Ted Hughes (1930-1998), one of the 20th century's great English poets, were both born in the troubled years of the 1930s. Their lives follow the accelerating environmental crises of the 20th century. Both have been well-studied by critical thinkers before, but this thesis seeks to read their poems afresh for their understandings of local places and global crisis in the century of the environment.
6
Krueger, Barbara Murphy. "Climate Change Virtue Ethics and Ecocriticism in Undergraduate Education." Thesis, Prescott College, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1583209.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the question: can an ecocritical approach to environmental virtue ethics (EVE) in undergraduate climate change education inform students' understanding of the ethical issues of climate change and promote environmental responsibility and action? Philosophical theories of virtue ethics will be discussed from an historical perspective as well as to its renewal in the 20th century, especially within the context of the wicked dimensions of the climate change crisis. Dominant themes in climate change ethics including concerns over the scientific complexity, global dimensions, temporal issues, intergenerational fairness and responsibility, justice, and human rights will be presented and used to devise a compendium of climate change virtues and vices. Environmental and climate change education research will be reviewed as well as the reasons for its failure to produce a substantial shift in attitudes and behavior of people especially in the global North will be deliberated. Ecocriticism, which studies the relationship between literature and visual and audial art will be explored, and a novel curriculum based on theoretical elements from climate change virtue ethics and supported with examples of the ecocritical arts will be proposed. It is my belief that an interdisciplinary framework supported and illustrated by climate change ecocriticism from any and all of the literary, visual, audial, and performance arts will create deeper understandings of climate change complexity.
7
Finch-Race, Daniel Andrew. "Ecocritical approaches to Charles Baudelaire's urban verse, 1857-61." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709515.
Full text
8
Aghoghovwia, Philip Onoriode. "Ecocriticism and the oil encounter : readings from the Niger Delta." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86488.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study seeks to understand the ways that environmental concerns and the phenomenon of oil production in the Niger Delta are captured in contemporary literary representations. In the thesis, I enlist several works, five poetry collections and a Nollywood video film, produced between 1998 and 2010, to investigate and analyse the different ways they engage with the effects of oil extraction as a form of violence that is not immediately apparent. Amitav Ghosh argues that representing something of such magnitude as oil modernity can only be done adequately through narratives of epic quality such as realist fiction or the historical novel. I move away from Ghosh’s assumptions to argue that the texts, poetry and video film have adequately captured the oil encounter, but not on a grand scale or through realist fiction. I situate Niger Delta representations of the oil encounter within the intellectual frame of petrocultures, a recent field of global study which explores the representational and critical domain within which oil is framed and imagined in culture. In their signification of what I call the “oil ontology”, that is, the very nature and existence of oil in the Delta, lived-experience in its actual quotidian specificity, takes precedence in the imagination of the writers that I study. I propose that the texts, in very different ways, articulate these experiences by concatenating social and environmental concerns with representations of the oil encounter to produce a petro-literary form which inflects and critiques the ways in which oil extraction, in all its social and environmental manifestations, inscribes a form of violence upon the landscape and human population in the oil sites of the Delta. I suggest that the texts articulate a place-based, place-specific form of petroculture. They emphasis the notion that the oil encounter in the Delta is not the official encounter at the point of extraction but rather the unofficial encounter with the side-effects of the oil extraction. The texts, in very different ways address similar concerns of violence as an intricate feature in the Delta, both as a physical, spectacular phenomenon and as a subtle, unseen category. They conceive of violence as a consequence of the various forms of intrusion and disruption that the logic of oil extraction instigates in the Niger Delta. I suggest that the form of eco-poetics that is articulated gives expression to environmental concerns which are marked off by an oily topos in the Delta. I maintain that in projecting an artistic vision that is sensitive to environmental and sociocultural questions, the writings that we encounter from this region also make critical commentary on the ontology of oil. The texts conceive the Niger Delta as one that provides the spatial and material template for envisioning the oil encounter and staging a critique of the essentially globalised space that is the site of oil production.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek die maniere waarop omgewingsbelange en die instellings van olieproduksie in die Delta van die Niger-rivier vasgevang word in kontemporêre letterkundige voorstellings. In my tesis gebruik ek verskeie werke – vyf versamelings van gedigte en ‘n Nollywood [Nigeriese] video, almal geskep tussen 1998 en 2010 – om die verskillende wyses waarop hierdie tekste omgaan met die gevolge van olie-ontginning, as ‘n vorm van geweld wat nie onmiddellik opvallend is nie, na te vors en te analiseer. Amitav Ghosh argumenteer dat, om ‘n fenomeen van sulke geweldige omvang soos olie-moderniteit uit te beeld, slegs na behore uitgevoer kan word in narratiewe van epiese dimensies; byvoorbeeld realistiese fiksie of die historiese roman. Ek beweeg weg van Ghosh se aannames deur te argumenteer dat die tekste (gedigte en ‘n video-film) wel die olie-ervaring behoorlik vasvang, maar nie op groot skaal soos in realistiese fiksie nie. Ek plaas die Niger-Delta uitbeeldings van die olie-ervaring binne die groter raamwerk van Petro-kulture: ‘n nuwe studiegebied wat die voorstellings- en kritiese domein waarbinne olie gekonseptualiseer en kultureel verbeel(d) word, ondersoek. In hul voorstellings van die olie-ontologie van die Delta neem die ervaringswêreld in sy daaglikse werklikhede (in die gekose skrywers se uitbeelding daarvan) ‘n sentrale plek in. Ek konstateer dat die tekste, hoewel op heel uiteenlopende maniere, hierdie ervarings artikuleer deur sosiale en omgewings-oorwegings byeen te bring met uitbeeldings van die olie-ervaring ten einde ‘n petro-literêre vorm te skep wat die maniere waarop olie-ontginning, in al die sosiale en omgewings-effekte daarvan, ‘n vorm van geweld op die landskap en die menslike bevolking van die olie-ontginningsgebiede van die Delta inskryf, inflekteer en krities analiseer. Ek stel dit dat die tekste ‘n plek-gebaseerde en gebieds-spesifieke vorm van Petrokultuur artikuleer. Hulle benadruk die feit dat die olie-ervaring in die Delta nie die offisiële ontmoeting by die ontginningspunt is nie, maar eerder die onoffisiële ondervinding van die newe-effekte van die olie-ontginningsproses. Op hul verskillende wyses spreek die tekste ‘n ooreenstemmende besorgdheid uit aangaande die ingewikkelde rol wat geweld in die Delta speel – beide as ‘n fisiese, ooglopende fenomeen en as ‘n subtiele, ongesiene kategorie. Die tekste konseptualiseer geweld as seinde die gevolg van die verskeie vorme van ingryping en versteuring wat deur die logika van die olie-ontginningsproses in die Niger-Delta meegebring word. Ek suggereer dat die vorm van eko-poëtika wat hier geartikuleer word, uitdrukking gee aan omgewings-oorwegings wat in die Delta deur ‘n olie(rige) topos omgrens word. Ek maak die stelling dat, deur middle van ‘n artistieke visie wat gevoelig is vir omgewings-en sosiale vrae, die tekste wat in hierdie gebied ontstaan, kritiese kommentaar bied op die ontologie van olie. Die tekste verbeel die Niger-Delta as ‘n gebied wat die ruimtelike en materiële templaat voorsien om die olie-ervaring te visualiseer en te konseptualiseer, om sodoende ‘n kritiek te skep van die geglobaliseerde ruimte van olie-produksie.
9
Pickford, Stuart. "The dialogue between the discourses of ecocriticism and environmental poetry." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2009. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2306/.
Full textAbstract:
This practice-led thesis consists of a collection of poetry and a critical commentary. Through both parts, I examine the nature of the dialogue between ecocriticism and environmental poetry, specifically, the representation of non-human creatures, the representation of bioregions and the use of binarisms, especially as they apply to gender roles. The critical commentary analyses ecocritical perspectives with regard to these issues before contextualizing them in terms of contemporary, mainstream environmental poetry. My own practice is located within this context to reveal the nature of the dialogue between the two discourses. Although the collection of poetry should be read before the critical commentary, I intend for individual poems to be revisited when they form the subject of discussion within the commentary. Ecocriticism is a relatively new discourse that has gained increased prominence over the last decade. This research examines the discourses of ecocriticism and environmental poetry revealing that there are a number of undertheorized areas. Additionally, it demonstrates that the characteristics of the two discourses mean that they sometimes have different agendas. The nature of the dialogue shows that, in some instances, there is disagreement, but more frequently, one discourse tests, expands and qualifies the other, revealing biases and blind spots. As part of this practice-led research, I critique a number of prescriptive definitions of environmental poetry in order to propose a more clearly defined, comprehensive and relevant type of environmental poetry, a significant aspect of this project. My own new definition is an attempt to focus the attention of poets and ecocritics, rather than to be prescriptive.
10
Xu, Jingcheng. "Early Daoism, ecocriticism and the Anthropocene : the case of Edward Thomas." Thesis, Bangor University, 2018. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/early-daoism-ecocriticism-and-the-anthropocene-the-case-of-edward-thomas(c559d542-4f8a-4bb4-bf6c-38ee126a1394).html.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation will explore the contemporary value of early Daoism, a Chinese indigenous philosophy established prior to the Qin period (221 B.C.E.). It will suggest, as we enter the Age of the Anthropocene, that early Daoist thinking is useful to present-day ecocriticism. In short, it offers a way of restoring spiritual concerns to our thinking about environmental crises that we often presently consider in purely physical and material ways. After setting out the principles of early Daoism and suggesting its usefulness to contemporary ecocriticism, this thesis will consider the poetry of Edward Thomas as a case study of how early Daoism can offer new insights into canonical western literature. It will show how Daoist thinking offers re-readings of Thomas’s poetry that bring spiritual matters to the centre of our understanding of the present environmental quandaries. My project intervenes in the literary field in three ways: firstly, it is a contribution to the literary critical field of Edward Thomas studies; secondly, it brings the tradition of Eastern thought firmly into the realm of ecocriticism; thirdly, it works more broadly to raise the profile of Chinese thinking and further dismantle Euro-American literary and cultural hegemonies.
11
Poppleton-Pritchard, Rosalind. "A crisis 'in country' : an ecocritical approach to Tim O'Brien's fiction." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.323457.
Full text
12
Smart, Eric. "Transnational Perspectives on Ecocriticism: (Un)Natural Borders, National Privilege, and Environmental Racism." Ohio University Art and Sciences Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouashonors1555939805670678.
Full text
13
Kryzanauskas, Lukas. "Teaching Timely Ecocriticism: Analysing Dylan Thomas’s imagery of anthropogenic dumbness and temporality." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-82459.
Full text
14
Gladding, Kevin. "NEGOTIATING PLACE: MULTISCAPES AND NEGOTIATION IN HARUKI MURAKAMI'S NORWEGIAN WOOD." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2005. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/4057.
Full textAbstract:
In Murakami's Norwegian Wood, romance and coming-of-age confront the growing trend of postmodernity that leads to a discontinuity of life becoming more and more common in post-war Japan. As the narrator struggles through a monotonous daily existence, the text gives the reader access to the narrator's struggle for self- and societal identity. In the end, he finds his means of self-acceptance through escape, and his escape is a product of his attempts at negotiating the multiple settings or "scapes" in which he finds himself. The thesis follows the narrator through his navigation of these scapes and seeks to examine the different way that each of these scapes enables him to attempt to negotiate his role in an indifferent and increasingly consumerist society. The Introduction discusses my overview of the project, gives specifics about Murakami's life and critical reception and outlines my particular methodology. In the overview section, I address the cultural and societal tensions and changes that have occurred since the Second World War. Following this section, I provide a brief critical history of Murakami's texts, displaying not only his popularity, but also the multiple disagreements that arise over the Japanese-ness of his work. In my methodology section, I plot my eco-critical, eco-feminist, eco-psychological and deconstructive procedure for dissecting Murakami's text. The subsequent chapters perform a close reading of Murakami's text, outlining the different scapes and their attempts at establishing identity. Within these chapters, I have utilized subheadings as I felt they were needed to mark a change not on theme, but on character and emphasis. My conclusion reasserts my initial argument and further establishes the multiscapes as crucial negotiations, the price and product of which is self-identity.M.A.
Department of English
Arts and Sciences
English
15
Erickson, Kathryn. "SILENCE, ABSENCE, AND MYSTERY IN LINDA HOGAN'S MEAN SPIRIT, SOLAR STORMS, AND POWER." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2006. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/3470.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT In Mean Spirit, Solar Storms, and Power, Linda Hogan uses the devices of silence, absence, and mystery to articulate the oppression and marginalization of Native Americans. Specifically, because of the environmental crises that produce conflict in each novel, the project benefits from ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and ecopsychology. Also, because of various interpretations that open up when silence is examined, theories of deconstruction strengthen the thesis. Ultimately, Hogan's characters move from silence as a form of tyranny to silence as a form of reconnection with tribal ways. As the characters discover pathways to native traditions, they also discover spiritual connections with the biosphere. The movement from silence as a form of tyranny to silence as healing to silence as a means of reconnection with tribal traditions and kinship with the environment ensures the natives' healing and survival. The Introduction discusses the overview of the project, illustrates my thesis regarding Hogan's use of silence, absence, and mystery, and outlines my critical methodology. In the methodology chapter, I detail specific references to ecocritical, ecofeminist, ecopsychological, and deconstructive texts that I use to analyze Hogan's novels. Beginning with Chapter Two, I discuss Mean Spirit, which is based on a true story involving the murders of Osage people during the 1920s in Oklahoma. In Chapter Three, I examine Solar Storms and track Hogan's use of silence, absence, and mystery in the story of a teenage girl who returns to her birthplace and reconnects with her tribe and the wild lands surrounding her home. Chapter Four features my close reading of Power, a coming-of-age story blended with eocological and ethical conflicts taking place in rural Florida. Finally, Chapter Five concludes the thesis and reasserts my argument that Hogan's use of silence, absence, and mystery illuminates the conflicts in her characters' lives and ultimately serves to clear a space for healing and survival.M.A.
Department of English
Arts and Humanities
English
16
Lepori, Giulia. "Land is Shaped as Land Shapes: A Material Ecocritical Autoethnography." Thesis, Griffith University, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/419494.
Full textAbstract:
Situated in the environmental humanities, Land is Shaped as Land Shapes: A Material Ecocritical Autoethnography is an interdisciplinary doctoral project grounded in the permacultural site of Thar dö Ling in rural north-western Sicily, Italy. Within a theoretical and methodological framework inspired by ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, and a personal land ethic, the research crafted a “collage methodology” to enact a reading and writing of the permacultural site, combining six months of autoethnographic fieldwork with material ecocritical analysis. Conceiving permaculture design as a type of more-than-human communication that can favour multispecies and elemental mutual relationality, the site is interpreted as a more-than-human inscription where to gather (another word for “read”) a shared narrative of regeneration.
Following feminist and environmental humanist invitations for “storying” and “worlding” as ethical works of living and relating with more-than-human worlds, this thesis is written within an elemental and multispecies frame offering different temporal and spatial scales, from multiple perspectives. The collage methodology draws dimensions of my personal memories and familial inheritances into relation with immersive fieldwork and situated memories, to write a collage of the Thar dö Ling permacultural site in coemergence with multiple narrative agencies and design abilities. Within this research, storying and worlding are recognised as more-than-human collective practices to draw attention to the narrative agencies and design abilities of other beings, nonbeings and elements composing both the permacultural site and the thesis. Collaging a composition of multiple temporal and spatial dimensions, agencies and partial encounters, this material ecocritical autoethnography is expressed as a process of reading, gathering, and writing the more-than-human threads within the Thar dö Ling fieldwork site.
This thesis comprises seven chapters, of which four are the autoethnographic parts dedicated to the fieldwork site’s recollection. Before encountering them, two chapters lay ground for this doctoral project, offering the intimate and larger context in which the research has coemerged, as well as the theoretical and methodological foundations. Across the autoethnographic chapters, the reader is invited to move within the permacultural site, guided by the topic-places of water, plants, food and waste as situated materialities emerging from the landscape in which Thar dö Ling exists. In conclusion, there is hope.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc
Arts, Education and Law
Full Text
17
Green, John. "Has ecocriticism gone off the deep end? Rethinking ecological formalism and social ecology." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/12637.
Full textAbstract:
Ecocriticism, with its dual interests in the study of nature and the protection of the environment, seems as though it should be a discipline that flourishes in a liberal academy that is comfortable with theory. It is not. This project looks at the dominant ideology that structures much ecocritical writing, deep ecology, and it suggests that the seemingly radical environmental politics that it proposes are really articulations of traditional anti-theoretical conservatism. In the first chapter, I look at The Ecocriticism Reader (1996), as a watershed publication in the rise of the new discipline, a publication that, at its foundation, deploys deep ecology as a given, even attempting to bring it in line with theory. The following chapter employs varying techniques to show how deep ecology functions on ideological grounds that are flawed, criticism levied from philosophy and science; central to that chapter is a parallel that I draw between deep ecology as a type of ecological formalism and the literary formalism of the New Critics and the Russian Formalists. The final chapter suggests a new direction that ecocriticism can take after the dismissal of deep ecology; social ecology, unlike deep ecology, is not anathema to theory, and by rehabilitating culture from its position on the bottom of deep ecology’s hierarchy, social ecology can offer new ways to think about the discipline.
18
Hansson, Petra. "Text, Place and Mobility : Investigations of Outdoor Education, Ecocriticism and Environmental Meaning Making." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för pedagogik, didaktik och utbildningsstudier, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-215139.
Full textAbstract:
The overall ambition of this thesis is to investigate the approaches taken to environmental and sustainability education in outdoor education and ecocriticism in a Swedish and in an international context, to investigate environmental meaning making and to conduce to the development of analytical methods for empirical investigations of environmental meaning making. Four objectives are formulated. The first objective of the thesis is to analyse constitutive discursive rules and traits regarding environmental and sustainability education and environmental meaning making in outdoor education in a Swedish context and in ecocriticism. This is achieved through discourse analyses of central textbooks in outdoor education and of research and textbooks in ecocriticism. The second objective is to investigate how different situated circumstances such as, text, place, mobility, social situations and previous experiences interplay in environmental meaning making. This is achieved through analyses of classroom communication, through analysis of nature writing and through an analysis of painted landscapes. The third objective is to compare and critically discuss the constitutive discursive rules and traits within the two investigated educational practices – out door education and ecocriticism – in the light of the results from the investigations of environmental meaning making carried out. The fourth objective is to develop analytical methods based on John Dewey and Louise Rosenblatt’s theories of transaction and meaning making for conducting empirical investigations of environmental meaning making in which different interplaying situational circumstances are taken into account. The results of the thesis show that taking a transactional starting point to investigate environmental meaning making adds further understanding of the situational circumstances influencing environmental meaning making in specific situations which sheds new light to the identified approaches to environmental and sustainability education in outdoor education and ecocriticism. These results suggest that a transactional approach to environmental and sustainability education can help to clarify taken for granted assumptions regarding the nature of situational circumstances such as text, place and mobility in environmental meaning making.
19
Stewart, Kirsty. "Nature and narratives : landscapes, plants and animals in Palaiologan vernacular literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2c1ad3f2-6ca1-4a5b-b682-fbb0bfc58fd2.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis identifies the role of nature within Palaiologan entertainment literature. The texts on which this thesis focuses include a selection of the Palaiologan novels, namely the Achilleid, Velthandros and Chrysandza, Kallimachos and Chrysorroi and Livistros and Rodamni, as well as two other, more satirical works, The Synaxarion of the Honourable Donkey, and An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds. These texts seem to be different from earlier works in which nature is prominent, utilising such material in an innovative way. The study of these texts provides us with information both on the Byzantine view of the natural world and on the use of literature during a particularly troubled period of Byzantine history. My main questions therefore are how nature is portrayed in these texts and what can this tell us about the society that produced them. The study of these vernacular texts indicates that the natural world is given a prominent place in the literature of the period, using landscapes, plants and animals in diverse ways to express assorted ideas, or to stress particular aspects of the stories. The animals and landscapes provide hints of the plot to the audience, which the authors sometimes then subvert. The authors draw on earlier Greek material, but parallels with literature from other cultures show similarities which imply a shared medieval perspective on nature with local differences.
20
Hillard, Thomas J. "Dark Nature: The Gothic Tradition of American Nature Writing." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/196066.
Full textAbstract:
"Dark Nature" examines literary representations of fears of nature in American literature, from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth century. Critiquing some dominant trends in ecocriticism, this project fills a gap in the field by studying texts that represent nature as a threatening force. By calling attention to such representations, I identify many of the cultural sources of those anxieties about nature at different historical moments. In the process, this project reveals that there has always been a Gothic subtext in the long history of literature about nature in the United States. "Dark Nature" begins by examining representations of Puritan fears of nature in New England, looking at authors such as William Bradford, John Winthrop, and Mary Rowlandson to show how the Puritan worldview established a "pre-Gothic" way of envisioning nature. It then moves to the post-Revolutionary era, using Charles Brockden Brown's "Edgar Huntly" to describe national anxieties about American wilderness and the ways those anxieties undermined contemporary Enlightenment ideals. The third chapter looks at the "darkness" within the work of that most canonical of nature writers, Henry David Thoreau. Despite the optimism of his Transcendental view of nature, I reveal that Thoreau's writing is often pervaded by moments of anxiety and even fear of the natural world. A further chapter about slave narratives shows how Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs present nature as darker than anything their romantic contemporaries produced, often consciously employing Gothic nature imagery as a rhetorical tool of resistance against their white oppressors. Finally, this study concludes with by exploring how some of Herman Melville's writing exemplifies a changing worldview in light of Charles Darwin's theories about natural selection and survival of the fittest. After the mid-nineteenth century, Gothic representations of nature tend to signal different types of fears based no longer on Puritan conceptions of nature, but rather on a post-Darwinian view. In calling attention to this overlooked lineage of writing, "Dark Nature" helps widen the discourse of ecocritical studies, arguing that there is much to be learned from studying representations of nature that are not only un-Romantic, but outright dangerous, violent, and terrifying.
21
Corum, John. "THE RELEVANCE OF GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ TO CONTEMPORARY ECOCRITICAL THEORY." OpenSIUC, 2016. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2042.
Full textAbstract:
Monoculture represents a hindrance to literary ecocriticism. While the ecocritical project aims to think globally, doing so within the linguistic confines of a single language restricts access to very helpful (but non-Anglo) textual material. I argue that of this material, Gabriel García Márquez’s novels are particularly useful because of his unique execution of magical realism towards environmental ends. This project uses ecocritical scholarship to revisit Márquez’s works and to examine the ways in which his deployments of environmental magical realism synthesize and build upon ecocritical elements from earlier trends in Latin American literature while suggesting new venues of evolution for the hermeneutics of ecocritical trends. Through a close theoretical reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and the Autumn of the Patriarch, novels which represent useful case studies for his polemical use of magical realism, I conclude that Márquez explores and suggests ways the field of ecocriticism can parse representations of an adversarial relationship between humans and nature.
22
Keller, Laura. "“Terrible in its Beauty, Terrible in its Indifference”: Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Sally Mann’s Southern Landscapes." W&M ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1530192830.
Full textAbstract:
Sally Mann (1951- ) has spent forty years photographing scenes in the American South, including domestic scenes, landscapes, and portraits. Although scholars generally interpret her work as a reflection of the region’s history of violence and oppression, my research will consider her work through the lens of postcolonial ecocriticism. In her art and writing, Mann portrays the land as an indifferent witness to history, a force intertwined with humanity, lending matter for human lives and reclaiming it after death. However, she also describes the way the environment interferes with her the antiquated technology she uses, creating dramatic flaws that imbue the landscapes with emotion absent from the scenes themselves. My research offers new perspectives on Mann’s body of work, especially the way she grants agency to the environment, thereby giving a voice to silent ecologies or silenced histories.
23
Svensson, Filip. "Tolkien's Natural Pathos." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-6585.
Full text
24
Holst, Chris. "”One log alone won’t hold fire” : Nature, Place and Regional Identity in Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone and The Outlaw Album." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-26945.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this essay is to examine descriptions of nature, both in terms of physical setting and as an abstract entity, and their relation to the concepts of place and regional identity in Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone (2006) and The Outlaw Album (2011). The main thesis is that when it comes to the characters’ relation to nature there is acceptance instead of resistance, and unification instead of separation. The essay also puts forth the argument that acceptance of nature can be seen as one of the key elements in both Winter’s Bone and The Outlaw Album. Moreover, the essay contains the idea that nature is a crucial part of the characters’ sense of regional identity in Winter’s Bone and The Outlaw Album. The theoretical background consists of ecocriticism along with theorizations of regional identity. When it comes to ecocriticism, a wide and multilayered theoretical field, the essay focuses on the works of three different scholars who all address the relationship between man, nature and place, namely Lawrence Buell, Fred Waage and Leonard Lutwack. The analysis consists of two parts. The first part addresses Winter’s Bone and mainly deals with the concept of family, the aspect of rurality and unification with nature within the novel. The second part looks at similar aspects in The Outlaw Album, but here, the emphasis is rather on the concept of outsider–insider, i.e. the difference between native Ozarkers and people who originate from outside the region.
25
Darlington, Miriam. "Ecoseismology : writing the wild in crisis." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15017.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis represents live and on-going research into the recent literary movement that has been termed ‘the new nature writing’. A focus within this movement has arisen which employs particular alertness to aural soundscapes in wild nature. This focus, which for the purposes of the thesis I am limiting to the British Isles, appears to be an increasing attempt to harness the human ear and employ it as a tool for ‘seismic’ effect. The method used, which I have termed ecoseismology, works at the intersection of the sensory and the literary; by using deep listening to external soundscapes it aims to achieve an integrative, internal effect through rendering of experience. Ecoseismology is a response to an intense period of ecological and environmental uncertainty. It is guided by immersive observation, often forensic in its closely-heard detail, where ecological particularities and sonorous dimensions of the natural world are sensed and rendered. Ecoseismology sensitises the listener and the reader in order to achieve shifts in scale where awareness moves from the particular, close-up, ‘heard’ and ‘felt’ experience towards thinking about more ecosensitive ways of living on the planet. To locate the spectrum of experience and output encompassed by ecoseismology the thesis exposes its three stages. By applying these stages to nature writings of the last ten years, texts that use or fit the ecoseismic method are identified. At the heart of these stages is the ecoseismic moment: a re-imagining of crisis provoking thought about the wider ecosystem which is intended to be a catalyst for change. The two ‘classic’ otter books which inspired the creative part of the submission, Otter Country, In Search of the Wild Otter, (shortened to Otter Country from here), are measured against ecoseismology. Then Otter Country’s own ecoseismic structure, which entails a quest for increased understanding of an elusive wild mammal, is measured. Alongside the sensory aspects of close encounter in this new otter narrative, issues of wider ecology are triggered, but didactic solutions are not directly sought. Thoughts provoked by this last aspect of Otter Country provide directions for further research: is it more effective to make readers feel, or to urge them to act? How is this movement within the new nature writing spreading to other genres and media, and what forms will it take, what effects will it have?
26
Buckham, Rebecca Lynn. "Reading nature the georgic spirit of Paradise lost, early modern England, and twenty-first-century ecocriticism /." Click here for download, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1760071351&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=3260&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
Full text
27
Gurnari, Marta <1996>. ""Material culture and ecocriticism in the Exeter Book riddles: a new perspective on Old English enigmatic texts."." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/19240.
Full textAbstract:
"The purpose of this paper is to interpret the riddles of the Exeter Book by reconsidering previous and modern research, claiming that the descriptions of many subjects through different devices offer the reader an insight into Anglo-Saxon sense of playfulness, material culture, literary and ecological consciousness.
First chapter analyses riddle genre starting with a historical approach, showing how it could be considered one of the most ancient kinds of literature. In chapter two Anglo-Saxon riddle production and its circulation is investigated. Third chapter has its focus on how the range of different subjects of the Exeter Book riddles provides insight into social relationships. Chapter four and five take into consideration two different approaches, anthropocentrism and ecocriticism, focusing on the meaning of material culture, how Anglo-Saxon interacted with things (non-human objects but also nature) and how interactions affected the concepts of time and modification.
The aim is to achieve some knowledge regarding Anglo Saxon perception of life, what it meant for them being inhabitants of the natural world. As a literary genre built upon metaphor, riddles are a perfect example to show how all things shift shape as time unfolds. Riddles solutions have long been object of study and still are under investigation, it is important to not forget the main characteristic of the genre: the fact that it is difficult to solve since it was meant to be a way of entertaining people through the intricacy of the given question. In fact, sometimes riddles do not have a ‘right’ answer, they simply allow for deeper thinking regarding a topic or issue, acknowledging other questions to arise in a critical reading, interrogating many aspects on different levels. "
28
Tania, Aguila-Way. "Fraught Epistemologies: Bioscience, Community, and Environment in Diasporic Canadian Literature." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31901.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation examines the intersection between diasporic subjectivities and scientific knowledge production in the works of Shani Mootoo, Madeleine Thien, Larissa Lai, and Rita Wong. I read these authors as participating in a burgeoning scene of diasporic Canadian writing that draws on concepts and tropes derived from the life sciences to think through a broad constellation of issues relating to contemporary diasporic experience, from the role of biogenetic discourses in the diasporic search for ancestry, to the embodied dimensions of diasporic memory and trauma, to the role of diaspora communities in the decolonial struggle against the emergent forms of “biopower” that contemporary bioscience has enabled. As the first study to address this burgeoning topic in diasporic Canadian literature, this dissertation asks: Why are diasporic Canadian authors taking up bioscience as a key topos for the exploration of contemporary diasporic experiences? How is this engagement with the life sciences re-shaping current conversations about diasporic kinship, memory, and embodiment, and about the role of diasporic communities in contemporary struggles for environmental justice? Complicating frameworks that understand bioscience only as an instrument of what Foucault calls “biopower,” I argue that the works of Mootoo, Thien, Lai and Wong prompt us to rethink the ways in which queer, feminist, anti-racist, and environmental struggles might constructively interface with the life sciences to challenge emergent forms of biological essentialism and biopolitical control. I demonstrate that, by using bioscientific tropes to highlight the complex and open-ended life processes that shape the human body and the wider environment, these authors construct epistemologies that attend to the global networks of biopower through which neoimperialism operates while also acknowledging the interconnected ways in which living organisms and material substances destabilize these global flows. I argue that, in so doing, these authors position diasporic knowledge production as a crucial locus for the rethinking of relations between politics and ecology, and between humanist and scientific ways of knowing, that science studies scholars like Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour and decolonial critics like Boaventura de Sousa Santos have identified as a central to contemporary struggles for environmental justice. Each chapter explores the work of one diasporic Canadian author in relation to a single, historically specific site of scientific knowledge production. Chapter one examines how Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night combines notions of gothic excess with a materialist emphasis
on the material agencies that inhere through bodies and environments in order to disrupt the gendered and racial discourses propagated by imperial botany. Chapter two explores how Thien’s novels Certainty and Dogs at the Perimeter draw on current debates around the neurobiology of memory and emotion to grapple, on one hand, with the fragmentation induced through diasporic trauma and, on the other, with the uncertainty of global risk culture. Chapter three examines how Lai’s Salt Fish Girl disrupts popular and scientific discourses concerning the genetic basis of diasporic ancestry to advance a model of kinship that is rooted not in a shared
ethnic heritage, but in a shared immersion in a complex web of interactions that includes genetic, evolutionary, and environmental forces. Finally, chapter four examines how Rita Wong’s forage mobilizes contemporary debates around the spread of genetically modified organisms to stage a productive encounter between diasporic, Indigenous, and scientific knowledges. I argue that, in the process of engaging with these various scientific debates, these writers stage trenchant
critiques of the colonial legacies and neo-imperial investments of contemporary bioscientific culture while also modeling more fruitful, ethical, and hopeful ways of engaging with scientific knowledge.
29
Saunders, Timothy. "Recovering the ground : landscape, ecology and Virgil's Eclogues." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369791.
Full text
30
Bourns, Timothy. "Between nature and culture : animals and humans in Old Norse literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6f561cfd-74d7-4369-b4e8-a78f030ccb16.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis demonstrates how animals and humans are interconnected in Old Norse literature. The two categories are both constructed and challenged in a variety of ways, depending on the textual genre and animal species. It thus reveals medieval Norse-Icelandic ideas, values, and beliefs about animals. The thesis is theoretical, comparative, and interdisciplinary, yet firmly rooted in a close reading of the sagas and analysis of their cultural-historical context. The first chapter explores relationships between people and domestic animals, namely horses and dogs, and to a lesser extent, cats and livestock. The second chapter evaluates the limitations to the human-animal relationship: prohibitions against bestiality and the consumption of certain animals as meat. The third chapter studies animals in dreams, which reflect human characters and share their fate and defining characteristics. The fourth chapter investigates human-animal transformations, whether physical, psychological, or both. The fifth chapter analyses human-animal communication, with a particular focus on human comprehension of the language of birds. The sixth chapter considers relations between animals and gods in Norse mythology; these parallel the connections between humans and animals in the sagas. The thesis determines how the human/animal dichotomy might have been thought about differently before and after the conversion to Christianity, with boundaries between animal and human becoming more clearly delineated; it examines how medieval Icelandic authors wrote about animals in experiential terms, but also drew upon conventional symbolism from continental Europe; and it proves how these literary representations of animals reflect an environmental ideology that was actively engaged with the imaginative, the supernatural, and the animal.
31
Adler, Katherine. "Once Upon an Ecocritical Analysis: The Nature-Culture of German Fairy Tales and Its Implications." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/18441.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyzes the relationship between German fairy tales and Ecocriticism by examining the similarities and differences in depictions of nature in the tales published by the Brothers Grimm in 1857 and tales written by political activists during Germany's Weimar Republic. "Frau Holle" and "Die drei Schlangenblätter" by the Brothers Grimm present nature as a means to support their bourgeois utopian ideals. On the other hand, the Weimar writers Carl Ewald and Edwin Hörnle's tales "Ein Märchen von Gott und den Königen" and "Der kleine König und die Sonne" (respectively) employ the traditional form of the fairy tale to espouse free-thinking and criticize the weaknesses of the Grimms' utopian ideal. My ecocritical analysis is based on a synthesis of environmental sciences and sociocultural influences.
32
Wallace, Molly. "Novel ecologies : nature, culture, and capital in contemporary U.S. fiction and theory /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9329.
Full text
33
Bristow, Tom. "A cultural study in the poetics of ecological consciousness : prolegomena to the poetry of John Burnside." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3478.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis -- originally entitled “Reckoning the Unnamed Fabric”, both a cultural study of the poetics of ecological consciousness and the ecology of poetic consciousness -- investigates the post-Romantic legacy informing John Burnside’s (b. 1955) poetry from The hoop (1988) to The Light Trap (2002) as a case study. The thesis argues that a developing aesthetic form and movement in subject derive from Burnside’s increasing involvement with ecological thought and practice. This move to the poetry of the oikos begins with an investigation of the self through the reconciliation of subject with object (or human with nature), and latterly has moved into a sustained reflection upon the idea of dwelling. This thesis relates the chronological development across Burnside’s nature poetry to an aesthetic infused with religious iconography and language, which via an evolving motif-poem of ‘world-soul’ or ‘communal fabric’ increases in its secular and empirical inflection. I read Burnside’s elevation of historical materialism s a progression in Wordsworthian craft and as a result of the poet’s pragmatic reflection on dwelling; I argue that the poetic consolidation of the intrinsic value of nature as an active and guiding spirit promotes nature less as a place for inhabitants than as the site and point of relation. The argument responds to Burnside’s transatlantic perspective from which he questions what it means to live as a spirit, and what a poetics of ecology can achieve in respect to the human subjective lyric and the need to transcend the human into the collective. To address these questions, which are implicit in Burnside's oeuvre, I draw upon Heideggerian poetics and American post-Transcendentalist Romanticism. I locate Burnside’s poetics within philosophical, aesthetic, and ecological frameworks. First, Burnside’s poetry is primarily a poetics of ontology that understands the ‘I’ within the midst of things yet underpinned by epistemology/hermeneutics; second, Burnside exhibits neo-Romantic poetry that has engaged with Modern American poetry -- it is this fusion that I call post-Romantic; third, the ecological constitutes both Burnside’s political stance and his aesthetic-poetic stance. I read the latter as a reflection of Jonathan Bate’s notion of the ecopoem as the “post-phenomenological inflection of high Romantic poetics”, an idea which is most apposite when read in relationship with Burnside’s path towards the metaphysical inscribed in the historical.
34
Schroder, Simone. "Turning nature into essays : the epistemological and poetic function of the nature essay." Thesis, University of Bath, 2017. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.760937.
Full textAbstract:
The topic of this doctoral thesis is the nature essay: a literary form that became widely used in European literature around 1800 and continues to flourish in times of ecological crisis. Blending natural history discourse, essayistic thought patterns, personal anecdotes, and lyrical descriptions, nature essays are hybrid literary texts. Their authors have often been writers with a background in science. As interdis-cursive agents they move swiftly between different knowledge formations. This equips them with a unique potential in the context of ecology. Essayistic narrators can grasp the interdisciplinary character of environmental issues because they have the ability to combine different types of knowledge. They can be encyclopae¬dic fact mongers, metaphysical ramblers and ethical counsellors. More often than not they are all in one person. Where nature essays were taken into consideration so far they were mostly discussed together with other nature-oriented nonfiction forms under the label ‘nature writing’. This study proposes a different approach in that it insists that the nature essay has to be understood as a literary form in its own right. It explores canonical works of nature writing, such as Thoreau’s Walden, often for the first time as nature essays by discussing them alongside other typical examples of this genre tradition. In order to better understand the discursive impact of this form, I frame my discussion in the context of ecocritical theory. This means that I analyse my corpus of texts with regard to the ways in which writers depict the relationships between human and nonhuman spheres. Putting a particular focus on Germanic and An-glophone literature, the present thesis investigates central paradigms in the evolu-tion of nature essay writing. It covers a time period that stretches from its roots in late eighteenth-century natural history discourse to the present, identifying key epistemological, formal, and thematic patterns of this literary form the importance of which so far has been rather neglected by literary criticism.
35
David, Sophia. "Eco-fiction : bringing climate change into the imagination." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/24331.
Full textAbstract:
As a global population, inclusive of humans, fauna, and flora, we are each subject, though disproportionality, to the risks associated with our planet’s changing climate. These changes are largely caused by our unabated expulsion of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Our globalized world and economic activities have largely engendered the burning of fossil fuels. The 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, which means keeping warming below 2°C, we need to achieve emissions scenarios relative to pre-industrial levels. Without such reductions we can expect substantial species extinction, increased food insecurity, frequent extreme precipitation events, continued warming and acidification of the ocean, global mean sea level rise, and more frequent and longer lasting heatwaves. Responding to this means collective action at a global level. In my thesis I ask how the novel can respond to and help us to cognise these demands, as well as to cognise the scale and complexities of climate change, its philosophical and physical implications, and to attend to the particularities of local place whist remaining global in its scope and vision. I argue that climate change gives rise to a new form of novel. My work is primarily concerned with eco-fiction and how it can raise consciousness about climate change. I consider that the novel, as a counterfactual narrative, can personalise the issue, create stories so that we have ways to speak about it and enchant us towards an ecological imagining. My thesis begins by discussing the existing genre of popular climate change fiction. This mostly consists of clichéd, post-apocalyptic and hero-orientated disaster narratives. These novels are often predictable and limited in how they can engage the reader with climate change. In my second chapter I look at how climate change affects and alters our language. Certain processes belonging to it lead to a loss of words but also to the production of new words. I examine these themes in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Marcel Theroux’s Far North (2009) and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007). My third chapter considers how climate change confounds scales and forms of measurement, as it can be invisible, trans-temporal and trans-spatial. I discuss this in reference to John Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956), Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1984) and Nadine Gordimer’s Get a Life (2005). In my fourth chapter, by close reading of Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) and Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), I suggest how much of our existing climate change discourse has become outworn and fails to prompt critical reflection. In my fifth chapter I argue that particular mitigation strategies and consequences of climate change force us to revise certain epistemologies. I examine how this is represented in Jean Hegland’s Into the Forrest (1995) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (2012). In each of these chapters I suggest that creative writing and revising the form of the novel can take account of these aspects and bring climate change into the imagination. In my final chapter I discuss how Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) overcomes some of the obstacles associated with representing climate change in the novel. The Hungry Tide’s form, plot and characters are structured by the unique tidal landscape of the Sundarbans, Bengal. Popular fiction typically provides an egocentric account, concerned with the development and interior world of an individual. Yet, they must move towards a more holistic outlook, as found in Ghosh’s example, which can depict the wider interconnections of the nonhuman world. Though climate change is both global in impact and the response it demands, it is particularity with the local that I consider to be essential to eco-fiction. The complexity, wonder and incalculable interconnections and variety owing to place cannot be evoked without such particularity. Therefore climate fiction must balance itself against the broad demands of a global crisis whilst attending to the special character of place and fabric of the local.
36
Hermanson, Scott Douglas. "The Simulation of Nature: Contemporary Fiction in an Environmental Context." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin991838727.
Full text
37
Daw, Sarah Harriet. "Writing ecology in Cold War American literature." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/19367.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the function and presentation of “Nature” in American literature written between 1945 and 1971. It argues that the widespread presence of ecological representations of “Nature” within Cold War literature has been critically overlooked, as a result of Cold War literary criticism’s comparatively narrow concentration on the direct effects of political and ideological metanarratives on texts. It uncovers a plethora of ecological portrayals of the relationship between the human and the environment, and reveals the significance of the role played by non-Western and non-Anglocentric philosophies and spiritualties in shaping these presentations. This study is methodologically informed by the most recent developments in the field of ecocriticism, including Scott Knickerbocker’s work on ecopoetics and Timothy Morton’s explorations of the problems associated with the term “Nature”. It finds significant continuities within these ecological portrayals, which suggest that nuclear discourse had an influential effect on the presentation of “Nature” within Cold War literature. This influence is, however, heavily mediated by the role that non-Western and non-Anglocentric philosophies play in writers’ theorisations of relations of interdependence between the human and the environment. Such literary presentations challenge the understanding that the Nuclear Age represents a conquest of “Nature”. Rather, they reveal that a number of Cold War writers present human interdependence within an ecological system, capable of the annihilation of the human, and of the containment of the new nuclear threat. The thesis’s introductory chapter questions the characterisation of Silent Spring (1962) as the founding text of the modern environmental movement. It outlines this study’s intervention into the field of Cold War criticism, detailing its specific ecocritical methodology and engaging with the legacy of Transcendentalism. Chapter One looks at the work of Paul Bowles, with a primary focus on The Sheltering Sky (1949). It demonstrates the centrality of the landscape to the writer’s creative project, and reveals the substantial influence of the Sufi mysticism on Bowles’s presentation of the human’s relationship to the environment. Chapter Two focuses on the work of the New Mexican poet Peggy Pond Church. It establishes the influence of the writer’s familiarity with the Pueblo Native American worldview on her poetic portrayals of the human and the nuclear as interrelated parts within a greater ecological system. It also uncovers similar portrayals within the work of the “father of the atomic bomb”, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The third chapter analyses the effects of Chinese and Japanese literature and thought on the work of J. D. Salinger. It outlines the function of “Nature” in the work of the specific translators that Salinger names, arguing that this translated Taoism substantially informed the ecological vision present across his oeuvre. Chapter Four explores the impact of Simone Weil on the work of Mary McCarthy. It reads Birds of America (1971), demonstrating the governing influence of Weil’s concept of “force” on McCarthy’s presentation of the human as an interdependent part within a powerful ecological system.
38
Perkins, Hilary Elaine. "'Plastic' perspectives : ecocriticism, epigenetics and magic real metamorphoses in the fiction of Suniti Namjoshi, Githa Hariharan and Salman Rushdie." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2017. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/418008/.
Full textAbstract:
In current research across the humanities and science, there is a burgeoning interest in ‘plasticity,’ epigenesis and ecocriticism. This project brings ideas from these fields together, and asks how they may be expanded and illuminated by metamorphoses articulated in Magic Real fiction. Thus, I argue that Magic Real literature has a significant role in disseminating contemporary bio-scientific ideas. My methodology consists of applying Catherine Malabou’s theory of plasticity to literature, arguing that ‘plastic readings’ evoke more complex and ecologically generative models of metamorphosis. As such, they subvert the merely ‘flexible’ or often vaunted general ‘interconnectedness’ of life. Philosopher of Biology John Dupré highlights the centrality of process to biological science, refuting the existence of discrete and unique individuals, and arguing that ecosystems are far more synergetic than a relatively simple interrelatedness suggests. Indeed, his theory of ‘promiscuous individualism’ repudiates the existence of discrete individuals, and ‘promiscuous realism’1 renounces inflexible species categories. The removal of such rigid classifications enable varied and limitless ‘plastic perspectives’ as evident in Magic Real fiction, and affectively convey more authentic, intensely ‘felt’ and shared responses to the environment. Thus, this thesis indicates ways in which a fusion of Magic Real literature and biological science, may productively contribute to ecocriticism. Furthermore, metaphors of skin describe the inclusiveness and ‘literal’ physicality of biological transformation in visceral and fantastic ways, connecting literature with science, and broadening the field of ecocriticism through approaches that challenge the centrality of the human self. Ecocriticism, defined by Cheryll Glotfelty in The Ecocriticism Reader, as ‘the relationship between literature and the environment,’ has previously largely involved a partial focus on ‘human’ environments, totemic species and the scientific or ‘factual’ genres of non-fiction and Western documentary. This thesis addresses these prejudices through the analysis of the work of two lesser known Postcolonial writers Suniti Namjoshi and Githa Hariharan. Their Magic Real literature addresses out-dated hierarchies of nation, gender, species and genre by elucidating metamorphoses of domestic or ‘lesser’ creatures, rather than the charismatic-megafauna more usually the subject of fiction and often employed by environmental conservation campaigns.
39
Ohlsson, Anna. "Att hylla livet, men rädas dess framtid : Den globala uppvärmningen genom Bob Hanssons ögon." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-160857.
Full textAbstract:
The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the possibility to communicate messagesrelated to sustainable development through cultural works. Culture is here synonymous toliterature or, more specifically, the fiction genre. According to ecocritical research, this genrehas the capacity to contribute to a more sustainable development and is therefore interestingto analyse from an environmental point of view.The novel selected for the study is Vips så blev det liv - eller en hyllning till blågrönalgen(2010), written by the Swedish author Bob Hansson. The analysis is mainly focused on howthe book’s climate related messages are formulated and integrated in the story. Alsoconsidered is in what way Hansson’s strategies are compatible with the expectations raisedtowards the fiction genre within the context of sustainable development; expectations thatinclude the ability to evoke emotion, to convey new values and perspectives, and to act as alink between different parts of society.One conclusion to be drawn from the analysis is that Hansson approaches the climate issuein several ways. For example, Vips så blev det liv reflects both anthropocentric and bio-/ecocentric values, and the messages are delivered in an informative as well as in anillustrative manner. Moreover, the literary tropes give the book an emotional touch, whichmay help the reader to comprehend the information. In other words, the methods used are to alarge extent in line with the above mentioned expectations towards the fiction genre.What is however important to remember, is that the book includes several parallel themesand many comic episodes. For that reason, it cannot be taken for granted that the reader willpay much attention to the climate messages; however emotional, multidisciplinary andunconventional they may be. This highlights the difficulty in predicting the response to acertain cultural work. In order to understand its true potential in terms of communicatingmessages for a sustainable development, it is therefore essential to analyse the whole chainthat links the creator of the work to its recipients.
40
Bicer, Roza. "To Know One Country Is to Know No Country : An Ecocritical Reading of Setting in Jane Eyre." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-21493.
Full textAbstract:
The essay explores a new way of interpreting the role of setting in Jane Eyre arguing that nature does not only provide a pretty backdrop for the story. The theoretical approach used in the study is ecocriticism, an earth-centered method. This approach is juxtaposed with a traditional linear analysis of setting in Jane Eyre. The essay is structured along two main lines. In the first part I challenge the traditional linear approach to setting and in the second I show that Jane Eyre is intertwined with nature from the very start. Lawrence Buell’s theory of place, in particular, is used to demonstrate that Eyre is not necessarily a lost soul. By contrast, the many descriptions of nature in the novel imply that her character is so entwined with setting that she could be at home wherever life may take her.
41
Kuchta, Carolye. "Dousing the flame : an ecocritical examination of English-Canadian love stories." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4169.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is written in three segments: a novel excerpt, an introduction to the genre of English-
Canadian love stories; and a critical reflection on the creative process. The introduction to the
genre is written in the style of a book introduction and is intended for a general audience. My
ecocritical examination of love stories in English-Canadian fiction concludes that these stories
tend to be banal subplots that are nonetheless deeply engaged with nature. In this thesis, “love”
always refers to the intimate love shared between two lovers or would-be lovers, be they married
or unmarried, gay or straight, very young or elderly. Western culture often posits marriage as the
pinnacle of accomplished intimate love, though the books researched for this project profoundly
object to this viewpoint. Furthermore, the tendency toward scant, emotionally-impotent, and
distinctly un-sexy depictions of love doesn’t register indifference; it registers disillusionment. I
assert that a meaningful, distinct, and supportive correlation exists between love stories and
nature-human stories in these texts. Where more nature is present, more love is present and vice
versa. Where nature is less visible, love is less visible and vice versa. I use the term “ecology of
love” to address these instrinsic links—the in between—between humans and nature. The first
section of the thesis explores this phenomenon through the story and characters of an original
novel excerpt. The second section discusses the reasons for banality, which involve social ennui
and disillusionment, geographic obstacles, moral propriety, and the unique conditions that arise
in a nation of immigrants.
42
Gardner, Barbara J. "Speaking Voices in Postcolonial Indian Novels from Orientalism to Outsourcing." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2012. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/85.
Full textAbstract:
In Orientalism, Edward Said identified how the Westerner “spoke for” and represented the silent Orient. Today with the burgeoning call-center business with India, it seems that the West now wants the Orient to speak for it. But is the voice that Western business requires in India a truly Indian voice? Or is it a manipulation which is a new form of the silencing of the Indian voice? This dissertation identifies how several Postcolonial Indian writers challenge the silence of Orientalism and the power issues of the West through various “speaking voices” of narratives representative of Indian life. Using Julie Kristeva’s abjection theory as a lens, this dissertation reveals Arundhati Roy as “speaking abjection” in The God of Small Things. Even Roy’s novelistic setting suffers abjection through neocolonialism. Salman Rushdie’s narrative method of magic realism allows “speaking trauma” as his character Saleem in Midnight’s Children suffers the traumas of Partition and Emergency as an allegorical representation of India. Using magic realism Saleem is able to speak the unspeakable. Other Indian voices, Bapsi Sidhwa, Khushwant Singh, and Rohinton Mistry “speak history” as their novels carry the weight of conveying an often-absent official history of Partition and the Emergency, history verified by Partition surviror interviews. In Such a Long Journey, Mistry uses an anthrozoological theme in portraying issues of power over innocence. Recognizing the choices and negotiations of immigrant life through the coining of the word (dis)assimilation, Jhumpa Lahiri’s writings are analyzed in terms of a “speaking voice” of (dis)assimilation for Indian immigrants in the United States, while Zadie Smith’s White Teeth “speaks (dis)assimilation” as a voice of multiple ethnicites negotiating immigrant life in the United Kingdom. Together these various “speaking voices” show the power of Indian writers in challenging the silence of Orientalism through narrative.
43
Platt, Daniel. ""A Strangely Organic Vision": Postmodernism, Environmental Justice, and the New Urbanist Novel." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/18750.
Full textAbstract:
My dissertation examines critical engagements with the "new urbanist" movement in late 20th and early 21st century U.S. novels, including Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange, Helena María Viramontes's Their Dogs Came with Them, and Colson Whitehead's Zone One. I argue that these novels reflect new urbanism's valorization of neighborhoods that are walkable, green, and diverse, even as they critique the movement's inattention to environmental injustice and the long history of urban rights movements. Moreover, I argue that contemporary fiction's engagement with new urbanism has driven formal and stylistic innovation in the novel. The "new urbanist novel," I argue, blends elements of the postmodern literary mode, such as metafiction and narrative fragmentation, with elements that are arguably anti-postmodern, such as representations of stable collective identity and utopian visions of organic urban community.
44
Stuhr, Tracy Jill. "Re-sounding natures : voicing the non-human in Medieval English poetry." Diss., University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1911.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation examines how the non-human (the natural, not the other-worldly) world and its creatures were voiced in several late medieval English texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale and Manciple's Tale, and the Towneley Second Shepherds' Play. The dissertation is organized into three chapters which severally allocate voicing the non-human to three different (although conceivably overlapping) modes of representation - acoustic, formal, and performative. Underpinning this project is the objective to place these texts in a historicized ecocritical context.
In the first chapter I analyze the figurative (and formative) sounds the natural world "speaks" as it advances a crescendo of insistent clamor in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I argue that this poem exploits the common (and serviceable) conviction of the analogous equivalency of the two categories woman and nature - in order to register the anxieties engendered by the encroachments of women and the natural world in post-plague England. The second chapter addresses how the voices of domestication and its discontents unfold in the use Chaucer makes of the protean genres of fable and exemplum, proverbs, and the deployment of similes in two of his bird tales. I rely on current theorizing of interspecies and intra-species domestication to identify and extract the discontents I have found to be inhering in its processes: savagery/violence, hybridity, uninvited and unintended transformations, and theft. The third chapter considers how human and non-human voices confoundingly yet steadily implicated and entangled in one another - performatively discover homes amid multiple ranges, including silence, volume, laughter, and music. This chapter represents the effort to subtend and complicate existing understandings of this popular late medieval pageant by thinking in terms of ranges, variations, and multivalent characterizations, rather than slots, hierarchies, stabilities, and characters who have become little more than canned effigies.
In conclusion, I argue that late medieval poetic texts show a remarkable diversity in the ways and means their authors chose to variously voice the non-human, and that the particular forms this voicing took shaped, even as it was shaped, by the non-human world around them. This diversity and variation enables a more complex understanding of the different avenues and directions this voicing afforded to succeeding generations.
45
Graah-Hagelbäck, Katarina. "With or Without the "Divine Spark": Animalised Humans and the Human-Animal Divide in Charles Dickens's Novels." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-31638.
Full textAbstract:
Animals appear in many guises in Charles Dickens’s novels, as wild animals, domestic animals, animals used in the service of humans, and, not least, as images and symbols. Based on a close reading of all of Dickens’s major novels, this thesis centres on the symbolic use of (both metaphorical and actual) animals in the depiction of human characters, the chief aim being to explore a phenomenon that Dickens frequently resorts to, namely, the animalisation of human characters. Certain Dickensian characters are in fact more or less consistently compared to animals – to animals in general, or to specific animals. On occasion, not only individual characters but also groups of characters are animalised, and sometimes to the point of dehumanisation. By and large, being animalised equals being portrayed in a negative light, as if what Dickens himself at one point termed “the divine spark” – the special light accorded to the human brain as opposed to the animal brain – has been extinguished or has at least become almost imperceptible. Furthermore, in conjunction with the investigation of Dickens’s animalisation of human characters, the thesis discusses his implicit attitude to the human-animal divide and argues that, though largely anthropocentric and hierarchical, it also points to a view of human and nonhuman animals as part of a continuum, with no fixed boundaries. A number of different approaches inform the discussion, but theoretical frameworks such as ecocriticism and, above all, contemporary theory on the significance of Darwin’s ideas in the Victorian era, are foregrounded.
46
Grossman, Joanna Rebecah. "Shakespeare Grounded: Ecocritical Approaches to Shakespearean Drama." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13064927.
Full textAbstract:
Using the "Great Chain of Being" -- which was integral to the Elizabethan understanding of the world -- as a starting point, this dissertation examines the sometimes startling ways in which Shakespeare's plays invert this all-encompassing hierarchy. At times, plants come to the forefront as the essential life form that others should emulate to achieve a kind of utopian ideal. Still other times, the soil and rocks themselves become the logical extension of a desire to remove man from the pinnacle of earthly creation. Over the course of this project, I explore plays that emphasize a) alternative, non-mammalian modes of propagation, b) the desire to sink the human body into the earth (or, at a minimum, man's closeness to the ground), and c) the imagined lives of flora and fauna, while underscoring man's kinship with myriad organisms. In many of the works explored, a modern vision of materiality comes to the forefront, presenting a stark contrast to the deeply held religious views of the day. In flipping the ladder upside down, Shakespeare entices his reader to confront inherent weaknesses in human and animal biology, and ultimately to question why man cannot seek a better model from the lowly ground upon which he treads.
47
Cloyd, Aaron Andrew. "Narrating Rewilding: Shifting Images of Wilderness in American Literature." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/25.
Full textAbstract:
Narrating Rewilding analyzes interactions between imaginative writings and environmental histories to ask how novels and creative nonfiction contribute to conversations of wilderness rewilding. I identify aspects of rewilding in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, and Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge within a context of William Cronon’s and James Feldman’s works of environmental history, and I argue that the selected imaginative works offer alternative ramifications of rewilding by questioning Cronon’s and Feldman’s anthropocentric basis.
While Cronon and Feldman argue that a rewilding wilderness expresses interconnections between human history and expressions of nature, and that a return of wild aspects benefits human understanding and interaction within wilderness areas, in these imaginative writings, wildernesses are sites that flatten hierarchies between natural elements and human aspects, places where characters languish. They are lands deeply layered with both natural and cultural histories, but aspects of the past often remain beyond reach. Rewilding in these wildernesses equates with damage and loss.
Taken together, I argue that these narratives of wilderness rewilding augment one another, creating a dialog where Cronon’s and Feldman’s discourses of environmental recovery and of human gain inform corresponding imaginative writings but are also challenged by models of lament and loss. This restructured approach to wilderness rewilding offers a widened range of potential responses to an ever-changing, ever-rewilding wilderness.
48
Bunthoff, Kathryn C. "Consuming Nature: Literature of the World that Feeds Us." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1241616520.
Full text
49
Ferebee, Kristin Michelle. "Radiant Beings: Narratives of Contamination and Mutation in Literatures of the Anthropocene." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554724339910557.
Full text
50
Kerslake, Lorraine. "Correcting Cultures's Error: The Voice of Nature in Ted Hughes's Children's Writing." Doctoral thesis, Universidad de Alicante, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10045/110925.
Full textAbstract:
Sin duda todos los lectores y críticos de Ted Hughes estarían de acuerdo en considerarlo como uno de los poetas más importantes en la literatura inglesa del siglo XX. A pesar de ello, Hughes también fue un autor prolífico de literatura infantil, publicando a lo largo de su vida más de 25 libros para niños en forma de poesía, prosa, teatro y ensayos críticos. De hecho, escribió su primer libro de cuentos, How the Whale Became, en 1956 en lo que entonces era un pequeño pueblo de pescadores llamado Benidorm, durante su luna de miel con Sylvia Plath. Sin embargo, sorprende que la crítica no se haya centrado en el estudio de la literatura infantil de Hughes. En respuesta a la sensibilización en torno a la crisis ambiental que comenzó en el siglo pasado, la obra de Hughes indaga sobre las fracturas que han alejado al ser humano del mundo natural y tiene como objetivo restablecer el nexo de unión entre la humanidad y la naturaleza. Tal y como se explica en este estudio, la concienciación ecológica de Hughes se forjó en su infancia, en sus andanzas por el mundo natural que lo rodeaba. Al igual que en la obra infantil más madura del poeta, los primeros poemas sobre animales ya mostraban una preocupación por la conservación de las especies locales donde el apego hacia el mundo natural y el deseo de volver a conectar con la naturaleza a menudo se expresan a través de una preocupación constante por la educación ambiental. El universo creativo de la obra de Hughes se puede leer como un contexto para cicatrizar la fractura de la sociedad occidental con la naturaleza y un intento de volver a acercar la cultura humana a sus raíces. Es precisamente en ese contexto que Hughes desarrolla su búsqueda chamánica donde el chamán/poeta actúa como narrador, sanador y mediador, articulándose en un lenguaje sagrado en sintonía con el mundo natural. La función terapéutica y sanadora de la naturaleza está estrechamente relacionada con otros conceptos claves que Hughes explora a lo largo de su obra infantil tales como el mito, la imaginación, y la educación. De hecho, son temas integrados en su actitud como escritor y que forman parte de su universo literario. Para Hughes, los niños constituyen un público ideal puesto que todavía no han sido condicionados por la sociedad. Su literatura infantil representó una parte oculta de su ser autobiográfico, estrechamente relacionado con su búsqueda terapéutica de curación. En este sentido la misión sanadora de Hughes es doble. A nivel personal su obra se puede leer como una historia de redención, una alegoría de curar su ser fracturado. Por otra parte, su obra se puede leer también como una búsqueda para recuperar el equilibrio con el fin de curar las heridas que nos han distanciado de la naturaleza, para que la reconciliación entre cultura y naturaleza pueda llevarse a cabo. Teniendo en cuenta todo lo expuesto, surge la pregunta de hipótesis de esta tesis: ¿existe una búsqueda de curación en la literatura infantil de Ted Hughes? Para contestarlo se ha contextualizado la obra de Hughes en relación con los textos principales de la ecocrítica y he llevado a cabo un escrupuloso análisis de su literatura infantil a través de su poesía, prosa y teatro además de sus ensayos críticos y cartas. A través de una lectura ecocrítica de la obra de Hughes se ha planteado preguntas claves cómo las siguientes: ¿Cómo se relaciona su literatura infantil con nuestra crisis ecológica y qué es lo que pone de manifiesto una lectura ecocrítica de su obra? ¿Es su escritura sensible a temas relacionados con el medio ambiente? ¿Qué preguntas relativas a cuestiones medioambientales suscita su obra? ¿Qué sentido de curación y recuperación ecológica aparece en su literatura tanto en el ámbito personal como social? ¿En qué obras se consigue este aspecto redentor y equilibrio y armonía entre la naturaleza y la humanidad y en cuáles no? Tal y como se defiende en esta tesis, a través de la literatura infantil, Hughes esconde un ser autobiográfico oculto estrechamente ligado con su búsqueda catártica de curación. La mayor parte de la obra de Hughes responde o bien a una crisis personal y humana, o a una fractura del ser humano con la naturaleza. A través de la figura de la diosa y el poder del mito fue capaz de explorar las energías primigenias del mundo natural, así como las fuerzas creativas y destructivas del universo. La poesía de Hughes critica estas dualidades señalando el sentido de la absoluta alteridad de la naturaleza y las relaciones entre estas energías y la sociedad occidental quien se ha distanciado de la naturaleza. En su poesía adulta, dada la energía masculina predominante y la carga sexual y violencia que subyace en gran parte de su trabajo, rara vez se logra el equilibrio entre esas energías y fuerzas. Por otro lado, tal y como esta tesis argumenta, es en su literatura infantil – en su prosa, poesía y teatro – donde tiene lugar ese equilibrio de forma más exitosa, siendo terapéuticamente más redentor gracias a su efecto sanador. Con el fin de enmarcar el concepto de curación en su literatura infantil esta tesis doctoral se ha estructurado en dos partes: la Primera Parte, ‘Speaking Through the Voice of Nature’ (Hablando a través de la voz de la naturaleza), consta de tres capítulos y está dedicada a situar al lector dentro del marco teórico y de los aspectos biográficos más importantes de la vida de Hughes, así como su temprana relación con el mundo natural y su desarrollo como escritor y ecologista. La segunda Parte, ‘The Quest for Healing in Ted Hughes’s Children’s Writing’ (La búsqueda de curación en la literatura infantil de Ted Hughes), se centra en el análisis de sus obras literarias a través de los distintos géneros. Finalmente, tras el análisis de sus obras, la conclusión identifica los puntos principales de la investigación y los resultados del análisis.