The Study Of Seton's Animal Fictions

The Canadian writer Ernest Thompson Seton has been honored as " The father of modern animal fiction". His works owned a unique high status in the history of animal literature. Based on previous studies, chapter one will explain the development of animal literature; try to define "the modern animal fiction" through the comparison. In the chapter two. adopt to the text-reading method, the paper will analysis the animal images and the themes. The author divided the images into two types (strong and weak) dialectically and concisely instead of traditional thematic approach. After reading all Seton's works, theauthor concludes three basic themes- survival and growth, the awe of nature based onthe understanding, love and communication. Chapter three will parallel compare Seton's modern animal fiction with Jack London's traditional ones step by step. First, they live in the different countries with different literature tradition; second, since they have different creative ideas, the roles they choose, the definition of tragedy and the rhetorical devices are all different.; third, their ethics orientations are not the same, Jack London portrays the human nature from the aspect of social ethics while Seton focuses on the relationship between human and nature from the aspect of ecological ethics.This paper attempts to explore the differences between them in many aspects and highlights the value of modern animal fictions in ecology. The development of the ecological literature is closely related to the awakening of people's ecological consciousness. I hope this paper could draw the attention of the readers to the ecological sense in the modern animal fictions.