A Postcolonial Ecocritical Study Of J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime

John Maxwell Coetzee,Nobel Laureate in Literature 2003,is a well-known South African writer of postcolonial literature.Summertime,the final book of his trilogy of autobiographies,takes apartheid as the historical background and reveals the social ecology of South Africa during the colonial period.Up to now,Summertime has been interpreted by scholars from postcolonial or postmodern perspectives,but this paper argues that the environmental problems and ecological writing in the novel also deserve attention.Therefore,by use of the postcolonial ecocriticism theory,this thesis analyzes the oppression and alienation between human and nature and in human world.It is to reveal the social ecological crisis in South Africa while interpreting the efforts of whites and blacks to reconstruct identity and live in harmony.The thesis consists of six parts.Chapter one includes the introduction to Coetzee and Summertime,and research literature,which is followed by the significance and structure of the thesis.Chapter two introduces postcolonial ecocriticism.Chapter three analyzes the great damage to nature in South Africa caused by the colonial activities after imperial invasion.Chapter four elaborates the oppression and alienation in human world as well as identity crisis of whites.Chapter five analyzes the joint efforts of whites and blacks to rebuild the ecological harmony of the new South Africa,including pursuing eco-harmony between human and nature,promoting racial integration and reconstructing hybrid identity.Chapter six is the conclusion which emphasizes the importance of nature to mankind and advocates the equality between two races so as to realize ecological justice and social justice in new South Africa,expecting to provide inspirations for harmonious coexistence of different races and friendly reconstruction of the new South Africa,and also offer reference for researches on Coetzee as well as the building of community of shared destiny for mankind.