Toward a literary environmental ethics: a reflection on eco-criticism

摘要

In the present era of globalization, discussing the relations between man and nature as well as the environment has become a cutting-edge theoretical topic for almost all humanities scholars. In this respect, the rise of eco-criticism in the English-speaking world takes the initiative of intervening from a literary critical perspective. Partly due to introduction and translation from the West, and partly from China’s own ecological resources, eco-criticism has also risen in China and quickly flourished. Actually, the relation between man and nature has long been a theme not only in Western literature but also in Chinese literature, and Tao Yuanming’s creation of the “Peach Blossom Spring” as a Chinese version of Utopia serves as a particularly notable example. The present article, after some critical review and reflection of the positive aspects of eco-criticism, tries to deconstruct from a postmodern eco-critical perspective the exclusiveness of the “people-oriented” ethics dominated in current Chinese ideology, and at the same time, questions the nature-earth-centric mode of thinking advocated by the eco-critics. To the author, it is necessary to construct a sort of postmodern environmental ethics characterized by harmoniousness with differences reserved in the present era rather than raise another binary opposition between man and nature.