Nature as a theme in Canadian literature.

摘要

The relationships of people with the natural world are expressed in diverse ways, including painting, photographs, sculpture, song, video, and literature. This paper reviews historical and contemporary portrayals of nature as a theme in Canadian literature. The assessment is intended to explore how Canadians have articulated their feelings about nature through literary expression, and to thereby gain insight into their empathy for natural ecosystems and native species, and their concern about damage caused to those values. The paper begins with a broad overview of nature as a theme in cultural expression, including overarching ones in Canadian literature, and discusses the influential literary views of Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, and their critics. The paper then examines the expression of nature within seven focal areas: early aboriginal expression, narratives of explorers, stories of settlers, the genre of animal stories, 20th-century poetry, recent aboriginal literature, and environmental ideas in contemporary prose. Six dominant themes of the expression of nature in Canadian literature are identified: (1) humans as a part of nature; (2) a bounty of natural resources; (3) fear of an adversarial wilderness; (4) improvement of nature; (5) regret of environmental damage and perhaps despair of the future; and (6) love and respect of species and natural landscapes. Finally, the paper discusses how nature as a theme embedded in Canadian literature can be harnessed to further the compelling objectives of environmental literacy by providing sympathetic insights into the relationships of people and society with the species and ecosystems with which they share Canada..