On Ecological Literature:Ontological Test, Urgent Arguments And Basic American Spectrum

In modern society, man enjoys rich goods and materials that science and technology bring. Meanwhile, he suffers from the unbalance of ecosystem, the aggravation of environment, and the degradation of ecological consciousness more than any other periods. To a large extent, the crisis of ecosystem makes human’s great development achievements less honorable.As is widely acknowledged, all aspects of our social culture, including literature, shall jointly open up a way to help human beings survive in this world. The public may not be able to have a profound understanding of the relationship between man and nature. And some of them can barely express superficial concerns to their surroundings. In this sense, educational circles are firstly entrusted a realistic mission to arouse the ecological consciouses of the public and offer them more choices. Literature is believed to play an imperative role in accomplishing such a mission. The presence of literary works may change the world more or less. Specially in a world of ecological crisis, creations and researches of ecological literature have been endowed with an unprecedentedly realistic significance.Studies on ecological literature have become a hot spot since the early20th century, along with a series of environmental movements. However, this newly literary form has been infinitely generalized by researchers with high enthusiasms. For instance, many western researchers once classified country poetic works as ecological literature. They actually ignored that ecological literature, as well as its core value, was endowed under a particular background of ecological crisis and also with a special value orientation. Since the fog of ecological literature is spreading out, this paper first delivers a Marxism ontological test to ecological literature so as to build up a solid foundation for further studies. Ecological literature is a literary form:1) written by human individual with the ecological, practical and aesthetic consciousness to the ecological crisis;2) resulted from the practice of solving modern ecological crisis;3) represented the practical relation between man and nature, as well as man and society.With the reconfirmation of ecological literature, this paper next delivers a concentrated discussion on four urgent arguments:1) Misunderstanding of the modernity in ecological crisis;2) Predicaments of human status in ecological literature;3) Brief summary of subject matter in ecological literature;4) Confusion to the environmental protection.Ecological literature’s existence cannot be earlier than the occurrence of human individual’s conscious and practice to ecological crisis. Since human individual’s conscious and practice are hard to trace, literature review of ecological literature would better be carried on by revisiting a group of major writers in nineteenth and twentieth literature from the ecologically literary perspective in the limited scope America. This paper draws a basic spectrum of American ecological literature chronologically. American ecological literature has rapidly developed in the early20th century because of the wide and deep thinking of ecological crisis and a series of environmental movements with profound influence. Buil, an American professor at Harvard, once went straight to the point that ecological literature was a certain of writing for a dangerous world. The popularity of ecological literature in America reflects American writers’intensive anxieties about the future of the world and all life facing the inevitable crisis. The basic American spectrum of ecological literature will set up a typical model of ecological literature study to other countries, and give a reliable reference to the systematical study of this literary form.