Lawrence Buyer's Urban Environmental Criticism Method Research

This thesis intends to investigate the urban environmental criticism of Lawrence Buell,who is a distinguished ecocritical theorist from American.It has involved the following aspects of this literary criticism: the basis,the method,the practical application,the comment and future vision.Efforts are made to analyze the system of Lawrance Buell's urban environmental criticism,and try to apply it to Chinese literature,especially the urban writing about China.This article consists of introduction,five chapters and epilogue.The first section of the introduction elaborated the academic connotation of the topic and clarified the research object and research goal of this article.The second section sorts out the existing research related to the thesis topic in the western and China.The third section explains the overall logic,structural organization and research methods of the paper.Then it points out the significance and deficiencies of the paper's research methods and content.The first chapter mainly discuss the basis of urban environmental criticism,including the basis of reality and literary.On the basis of its reality,since the rapid development of modern industrialization and urbanization,the urban material environment faced serious environmental problems;urban environmental issues have also caused great concern to the government and the general public after severely affecting the living conditions of urban residents.The promotion of environmental protection and the introduction of related policies have played a catalytic role.Its literary foundation mainly refers to the development of literary studies in urban writing.Through the analysis of the above two aspects,it can be seen that literary critics reflect on the crisis of the actual urban environment,and study the interaction between urban material environment and people reflected in urban writing has realistic necessity and literary rationality.The second chapter talks about the theoritical discourse on Lawrence Buell'urban environmental criticism.Urban environmental criticism takes “environment” as a new perspective of urban research and study “environment and people in urbanspace”.Besides,the criticism takes "place" as an important category,and analyze the contact between people and urban geographic space.In addition,it interprets urban literary works in a new context of “environmental determinism”,and examines the important influence of urban material environment on people.Finally,this chapter discusses the important position of "environmental justice" ethics in the discourse of urban environmental criticism.The third chapter is the interpretation strategy of Lawrence Buell's urban environmental criticism.This part summarizes the specific methods of urban environment criticism through analyzing Lawrence Buell's large number of textual interpretation practices.Then the conlusion that the environment texts must be reconstructed firstly be concluded.The urban writing texts are interpreted in the context of urban environments,paying particular attention to the “toxic discourse” of texts,that is,words related to poisonous pollution in texts.The criticism must also emphasize the urban environmental metaphors in the text.These metaphors often symbolize the sense of depression,urgency and alienation.These feelings are also an important component of the “people's sensory experience in cities” that it emphasizes.Besides,urban environmental criticism also pays attention to people's "place consciousness" in the text.The forth chapter is the application of Chinese texts for environmental criticism.it learning the typical interpretation strategies of Lawrence Buell's urban environmental criticism by applying the important concepts have analyzed in the previous chapters.The first section uses Qiu Huadong's Beijing writing as the object of text interpretation.It analyzes a large number of “brown landscapes” described in these texts,as well as the absence of nature and the dissimilation of human nature,it considers the close relationship between the urban material environment and the living conditions of the people.The second section revolves around Wang Anyi's Shanghai writing,it starting from the perspective of “place” theory,the exploring the consciousness “place”,“non-place” or “reinhabitation” between the writer and the characters in the works.The fifth chapter is the significance of urban environmental criticism and itsdevelopment prospects.It is divided into two parts.The first part makes an objective evaluation of urban environmental criticism on the basis of theoretical research and textual application in the previous chapters.It not only affirms its theoretical value and practical significance,but also refers to its inadequacies in the construction and application of theoretical system in the emergence stage.The second part mainly considers the development prospects of urban environmental criticism in the context of global urbanization.It believes that urban environmental criticism should follow the development of ecocriticism from “local” to “global” and improve its own theoretical construction from a global perspective.The epilogue analyzes the realistic conditions and literary foundations of China,which are suitable for the development of urban environmental criticism and affirms the possibility of its application and development in China.