A Study On Robert Frost’s Nature Poems From Eco-critical Perspective

As the unofficial laureate poet in America, Robert Frost is one of the most popularpoets in the1990s. He wrote numerous poems during his lifetime and won four Pulitzerprizes. He attempts to build up a harmonious relationship between human beings andthe natural world. Frost’s childhood was not idyllic, but his love of nature set stage forhis writing career. Especially his living in the countryside gave him the specialexperience and offered him a different world to be explored.Through a close reading of his poems, it’s not hard to find that Frost’sunderstanding and attitudes towards ecological harmony change with his lifeexperiences and the background of society. On the basis of the literature review, thepresent paper will study Frost’s poems in three different phrases from the perspective ofecocriticism. To realize the harmony between man and nature, Frost chooses to return tonature and fully merges into the nature in his old age to derive the power from nature togo forward. The research question is to investigate how the harmonious relationshipbetween man and nature is reflected in Frost’s poems.Ecocriticism is adopted as the theoretical foundation of the paper. As a literary andcultural critical approach, ecocriticism is the study of relationship between literature andphysical environment, appealing people to drawing attention to the natural world, tohow it is literally or metaphorically presented and how values conveyed by literatureshape human beings’ attitudes toward nature.In his poems, Frost vehemently protests against the degenerated relationship ofman and nature due to the corruption of mechanical civilization. The industrial societyneglects the interdependent connection between man and nature. At the same time,nature takes revenge on human beings for their endless desire and man becomesmechanized and indifferent to each other and even to their family member. Heemphasizes the excessive and unlimited exploitation of nature will at last end up withthe destruction of human beings. At last, the thesis comes to the conclusion thatecocriticism should be employed to achieve the harmonious relationship between manand nature. Frost’s viewpoint of nature will arouse our ecological consciousness andinspire us to better understand nature and man-nature relationship and achieve ChinaDream as early as possible.