Research On American Wilderness Poetry In The 20th Century

American history determines the special significance of the wilderness in the United States.In a sense,the founding and the development of the U.S is essentially a concentrated repertoire with wilderness as the theme.Therefore,"wilderness" becomes an important keyword for us to grasp American culture.In American culture,the wilderness is both a physical existence and a spiritual sustenance,and its literary representation has constituted an important part of American literary tradition.Focusing on the key word "wilderness",this study intends to elaborate how the concept of wilderness is interpreted and the theme of wilderness represented in American poetry,so as to explore the interplay between American culture and American literature.This study focuses on the topic of the expression of the wilderness tradition in the 20 th century American poetry mainly because of two reasons.First,it is to reveal the hidden causes for a contradiction of physically absent wilderness and frequent literary presentation of wilderness.With the industrial revolution the physical wilderness gradually began to decrease,and especially since the 20 th century,it can be said that in a real sense the wilderness as a materialistic existence has almost disappeared.But meanwhile,in the 20 th century American literature,wilderness still plays an active and important role.Secondly,it is because there are many important American poets in the 20 th century paying special attention to wilderness,and wilderness poetry plays an important part in the 20 th century American literature.It is highly significant to explore the relationship between poetry and wilderness in this period to get a better understanding of American literature and culture.Besides the introduction and conclusion,there are four chapters in the main body of the thesis.The first chapter gives a review of representations of wilderness in American poetry before the 20 th century.The poems of this period showed people’s contradictory attitudes toward the wilderness,which set the tone for the early wilderness literature of the United States.The second chapter discusses the establishment and development of American wilderness poetry in three aspects: poetry and society,poetry and science,and poetry and politics,by examinging three important wilderness poets,namely Robinson Jeffers,John Haines and Gary Snyder,and their works.It is observed in the third chapter that the three poets all love being in the wilderness and their personal experiences in the wilderness influence their works to a great extent.The fourth chapter examines the poets’ understanding and expression of the value of the wilderness and finds that the 20 th century wilderness poetry has witnessed a shift from the human-centered to the non-human-centered and finally to the de-centered.Having examined the interaction between American literature and the development and changes of the Americans’ view of wilderness in the 20 th century,the conclusion states that the Americans’ attitude to the wilderness experienced a process from fear to appreciation and at last to protection,which mainly results from the actual changes of the physical wilderness.In the context of the disappearance of actual wilderness,the connotation of wilderness has shown a significant shift from a specific area to a specific statement.In a sense,wildness is replacing wilderness,which prompts the flourishment of wilderness literature in 20 th century.The origin and development of American wilderness poetry shows how America has experienced from cultural inferiority to cultural confidence and finally to cultural introspection.Nowadays,with the deteriorating environmental crisis,literature gets so deeply involved with the actual social and political life,and there is no exception to poetry.As the contemporary American wilderness poetry is drawing increasing interest from the readers with its strong sense of social responsibility,diverse language forms and rich artistic innovation,it is bound to become one of the hot issues in studies of American poetry.