A Cultural And Ecocritical Analysis On Gary Snyder's Selected Poems

Having created an unprecedented richness of wealth throughout the human history modern society developed dramatically on the highway of industrialization. Yet, all of these great hits are at costs of Mother Land's seemingly endless natural resource consumption. When people worshipped the glitz and glamour created by man's hands nature, our last sanctuary began to lose its blessing on man.Be aware of the increasingly severe environmental crisis and modern man's heart-deep sense of alienation and estrangedness more and more environmental concerned theoreticians and activists began to ponder upon the destructive way of devouring natural resources as well as the pervasive grand conceit of anthropocentrism which was greatly committed to modern days' civilization predicament. The green climate came into being under this cultural context and continued flourishing into the new century. Gary Snyder is one of the most prominent twenty century's ecological figure, the poet, essayist, translator, Zen student, and the environmental activist. According to him, ecological problems are not merely a scientific and technology matter, but a philosophical, ethical, critical and political reevaluation and modification on man's relationship with nature.As an application of ecocriticism to Gary Snyder's selected poems and a rudimentary cultural study on it this dissertation surveys briefly the literary history of ecocriticism, the traditional positions of environmental ideas and some outstanding modern ecophilosophies pursued by Snyder. In these ways I tried to coalesce the cultural study and the literary criticism and offer a comparatively comprehensive understanding of American nature poetry.In the introduction I explain why I chose the nature poetry and Gary Snyder as my topic.Chapter one is a brief introduction to the literary history of ecocriticism as well as some important concepts related to it.Chapter two is divided into two sections. Section one deals with the varying environmental attitudes within different cultural systems: western dualism along with Judeo-Christian religion which to a great extend have resulted the anthropocentric attitudes; and the Eastern holism, which is more congenial with modern ecophilosophies. By taking into the cultural roots of environmentalism into account, we could better understand the ecological connotations of Snyder's poetry which has been heavily influenced by several Asian subcultures poetically and philosophically. The second part of this chapter incorporates three terms into the ecophilosophy vocabulary compatible with Snyder's ecopoetic thinking: the Deep Ecology, Ecocentrism and Bioregionalism.The third chapter is a detail analysis on Snyder's life and selected poems as well as some of his early translation of Han Shan Poetry from the ecophilosophical stand and cultural dimensions. His nature concerned poems and Zen poems assured his deep ecology persuasions and the firm stands of Ecocentrism, his rendition of Han Shan poetry revealed his wilderness ethics and bioregionalism as well. And finally, despite the fact that he has been living with his family over twenty years in the deep mountain areas Snyder is always aware of his own responsibilities toward the society and Mother Land. As a reclusive hermit poet and the spokesman of wilderness he practices what he says with a solemn sense of commissions and devotion.