Ecocriticism in English Literature - Environmental Tradition and the Notion of Nature in Literary Text

Research Project

Project/Area Number	10610454
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	英語・英米文学
Research Institution	TOHOKU UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator	OTOMO Yoshikatsu Faculty of Language and Culture, Tohoku University, Professor, 言語文化部, 教授 (60007333)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	OZAWA Hiroshi Faculty of Arts and Letters, Kwansei-Gakuin University, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (70169291) ロビンソンピーター東北大学, 文学部, 外国人教師 ISHIHATA Naoki Faculty of Language and Culture, Tohoku University, Associate Professor, 言語文化部, 助教授 (30125497) ROBINSON Peter Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University, Foreign Teacher
Project Period (FY)	1998 – 1999
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1999)
Budget Amount *help	¥4,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,700,000) Fiscal Year 1999: ¥2,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000) Fiscal Year 1998: ¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Keywords	English Literature / notion of Nature / British Romanticism / ecology / ecocriticism / environment / 生態学 / 地球環境 / 自然破壊 / 散逸構造理論 / 想像力 / 文化的多様性
Research Abstract	It has only been two centuries since the color of green was associated with Nature's universal robe. A more enduring view of Nature has been its association with "everything", stemming from the pre-Socratic era's usage of the Greek word phusis. Successively demoted by the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian conceptions, Nature's meaning has changed. As medieval Christianity established the Creator of phusis, Nature became a symbolic creature representing the world derived from chaos. The name, "Nature", enabled the personification or apotheosis of it, which has proved its most potent sense to the present day. Then the late eighteenth century saw an enormous shrinkage in the meaning, "Nature" coming to mean the green landscape in the works of the Romantic poets. We are the descendents of the Romantics, since we owe the modern notion of Nature and this appreciation of our environment and ecosystem to them. Consider, for instance, Wordsworth's well-known phrase "We murder to dissect" in "The Tables Turned" - a highlight of his love of and sympathy with Nature inseparable from his critique of contemporary scientific rationalism. The spiritual wandering of Wordsworth and Tanabe in search of "disinterested love for nature's disinterested beauty" may exemplify human's predestined journey in search of ecological coexistence with our environment. Man repeats this journey every day, every year, and every century.