本文是一篇英语论文，本研究不仅有助于挖掘出威廉斯的生态思想，凸显其文学创作的生态价值与文学价值，还有助于敲响生态危机的警钟、唤醒人类的生态意识、为人类探寻生态文明建设之路提供可行的参照，以此让生态文学批评观念真正融入人与社会生活之中。
Chapter OneIntroduction
1.1 Terry Tempest Williams and Refuge
Terry Tempest Williams’works indeed record the current situation of humanexistence in the 20th century,deeply analyze the ecological crisis in the contemporaryworld and the survival problems of human beings and animals.The works representedby Refuge are forward-looking and show the ecological crisis of human beings andWilliams’thinking on harmonious ecology.Therefore,a good understanding of thisbook will be beneficial to reflect on the modern ecological environment problems inthe 20th and 21st centuries.
1.1.1 Terry Tempest Williams
Williams is not only an American writer and educator,but also a conservationist,and activist.Her works firmly take root in the American West and have beenconspicuously prompted by the arid landscape of Utah.Owing to Williams’growingenvironment and the cancer suffered by her family women members,her writingmostly focuses on social and environmental justice ranging from issuesof ecology and the protection of public lands and wildness,to women’s health,toexplore the relationship between culture and nature.
英语论文怎么写
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1.2 Literature Review on Refuge
After being published in various countries around the world,Refuge has wonhigh praise from readers and received top comments from critics.Over the next threedecades,several critics have studied the book from different perspectives.There areabout 40 relative research articles on Refuge from 1992 to 2023 at home and abroad.This book is mainly elucidated from the viewpoint of Eco-criticism,Eco-feminism,the dichotomy between man and nature and Mormon belief.
1.2.1 Previous Studies of Refuge Abroad
Nature,birds and human are described in Refuge.At the same time,Williamsintends to express her vision of building a harmonious natural homeland and reflecton the dichotomy of the West.Cassandra Kircher(1996)and Katherine R.Chandler(2005)both focus on the dichotomy found in Refuge.Kircher(1996)points out thatWilliams has reconstructed the dichotomy of women versus men,nature versusculture and puts it into the circularity of her extended family,thus avoiding the story’ssinking into idealistic realism.Similarly,Katherine(2005)also notes that duringWilliams’writing process,cultural dichotomies such as body and spirit,religion andscience,subjectivity and objectivity are ready to collapse.Meanwhile,Williamsattempts to resolve opposing practices,attitudes and ideologies and establish a new interactive relationship.In addition,Chandler and Goldthwaite(2003)edit andpublish a collection of literary criticism about Williams’work named Surveying theLiterary Landscapes of Terry Tempest Williams.Among them,Tina Richardson pointsout that Williams has been emphasizing the fact that women have cancer at a high rateand criticizes the physical ravage suffered by women and nature under the patriarchaloppression.Therefore,women must fight against this decadent orthodoxy and fightfor their own rights.
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Chapter TwoThe Lost Landscape in Refuge
2.1 Loss of the Natural Landscape in Refuge
Natural landscape is a kind of objective existence,but for writers and artists,natural landscape is also a material and multi-feeling medium.This part will discussthe loss of the natural landscape,including the destruction of Great Salt Lake,theescape and extinction of birds,and the contamination of women’s bodies.
2.1.1 The Destruction of Great Salt Lake
There is a great deal of description of the natural landscape about Great SaltLake,which is interspersed with memories of sensory experiences such as sight,touchand smell.
The book begins with an almost scientific description of the geographicallocation and hydrological characteristic of Great Salt Lake,and subtitles thefollowing chapters with precise data on the change of the lake’s water level during theseven years from 1983 to 1989.The data are deceptively simple,but their ups and downs are the most intuitive representation of the changes of the natural landscape ofthe Great Salt Lake,and are closely related to the survival of all creatures aroundGreat Salt Lake.Williams finds herself paralyzed in the face of the natural rising ofGreat Salt Lake and the fact that human over-exploit the area,but she could onlywatch the wetlands continue to decline and eventually become submerged.Growingup in Salt Lake City,Utah,Williams has a deep affection for Great Salt Lake,not onlybecause the Great Salt Lake supplies habitats to waterfowls and plenty of native birds,but also it brings people the spiritual comfort when they get into trouble.
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2.2 Causes of the Lost Natural Landscape
In Refuge,the causes of the loss of the natural landscape mainly refer to the lossof the Great Salt Lake,its birds and women’s bodies mentioned above.This part willexplore the causes from three facets:human’s isolation from nature,government’scontrol over nature,patriarchal culture’s domination over nature.
2.2.1 Human’s Isolation from Nature
Williams expresses a lot of criticism of the men within patriarchal society anddenounces their isolation from nature sharply.In Refuge,Williams’depiction ofhuman’s isolation from nature mainly exists in her condemnation of the CanadianGoose Gun Club.
In the chapter“Burrowing Owls”,Williams tells her experience in the Refuge toher friend Sandy Lopez after giving opinion on the fact that“Many men haveforgotten what they are connected to”(Williams,1991,p.10).That day,Williams andher friend go there for the birds.After their observation of some birds,they arrive atthe place where the owls live.According to Williams,after her first discovering of theowls in1960,she has come back every year to pay her respect.However,when theyapproach the site,Williams finds herself in unfamiliar territory:“The mound wasgone.Erased.In its place,fifty feet back,stood a cinder block building with a sign,CANADIAN GOOSE GUN CLUB.A new fence crushed the grasses with ahandwritten note posted:KEEP OUT”(Williams,1991,p.11).Then several membersof the gun club in a blue pickup pull alongside them.They explain the disappearanceof the mound to Williams that they do not kill the owls and it is those highwaydepartment guys raze the place to the ground and continue to say that it is hard todeny the fact that those owls are troublesome little bastards,pooping everywhere,barking all night long,which makes people restless,so they have to disappear.WhileWilliams drives out to the Refuge again,by chance,she meets the same three men inthe same blue pickup,and these men claim to be the operators of the newly builtCanadian Goose Gun Club and taunt Williams’s sense of loss:“‘Howdy,ma'am.Stilllookin’for them owls,or was it sparrows?’One winked”(Williams,1991,p.12).Charles Mitchell thus interprets this part,“The men’s contempt for the owls,and forWilliams’grief over their loss,is a reflection of their diminished capacity for intimateknowledge,their alienation from the land and,ultimately,from themselves”(Mitchell,2003,p.172).
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Chapter Three The Invisible Landscape in Refuge..................................23
3.1 Reproducing the Invisible Landscape by Memory..............................23
3.1.1 Objective Memory of the Landscape................................24
3.1.2 Collective Memory of the Landscape......................................27
Chapter Four Solution to the Landscape Reconstruction in Refuge............................38
4.1 Reconstruction of Natural Landscape....................................38
4.1.1 Seeking Beauty in Nature.........................................38
4.1.2 Seeking Refuge in Change.....................................40
Chapter Five Conclusion................................47
Chapter FourSolution to the Landscape Reconstruction in Refuge
4.1 Reconstruction of Natural Landscape
4.1.1 Seeking Beauty in Nature
英语论文参考
Beauty can be seen as a kind of value judged from an aesthetic and moral pointof view.Aldo Leopold suggests that“our ability to perceive quality in nature begins,as in art,with the pretty.It expands through successive stages of the beautiful tovalues as yet uncaptured by language”(Leopold,1966,p.96).Leopold wants to evokenot only the aesthetic consideration of humans,but also affinity and ethics.In today’sworld,people are engaged in routine work for a better living and rarely look up at thestarry sky.When enjoying the comfort and convenience brought by advanced scienceand technology,at the same time they also fail to catch the opportunity to savor thebeauty of nature.Building an aesthetic relationship requires that humans should notserve as conquerors of nature.
Williams always has a profound feeling for nature.She considers nature as herfriend because of its magic power to heal her injured spirit.In the book,sheincessantly presents the importance of experiencing the natural world and provides somany brilliant descriptions of birds,lakes and lands to remind readers that nature is arich source of joy and peace.Just as Williams demonstrates in the book that her mother accounts for the fact that it took her one month before her hospital check-up:As her mother lays on the red rocks,the heat of the sandstone baths her skin,and thedesert sun baths her soul.The experience of walking through the oldest gorge givesher a hope that allows her to accept whatever truth she has to face.The days spent onthe Colorado River is a kind of meditation,a spiritual resurrection.And her motherfinds strength in her loneliness.Now,that power is with her.From her mother’sexplanation,one can sense that Williams’mother loves nature as much as her,and sheis cozy and easy when she is surrounded by the natural landscapes.Diane continues tosay that“those days on the river were a meditation,a renewal.I found my strength inits solitude.It is with me now”(Williams,1991,p.29).Diane’s quest for some peace,privacy and healing in nature for she counts nature as her closest friend who gives herthe power to defeat her illness.In this sense,humans need to communicate withnature.Like Stephen R.Kellert writes“The natural world remains the bedrock of ourmaterial security,intellectual capacity,emotional bonding,and spiritual connection.Conversely we cannot achieve lives of physical and moral worth built upon thedestruction of nature as we know it”(Kellert,2002,pp.136).Humans are closelyrelated with nature and they are a part of it.The intention of appreciating nature is notsimply to learn about themselves but those people can savor the beauty of nature.Andnature is wonderful,plenteous and spectacular in her eyes.The best way for her tofind herself and resolve her difficulty is being in nature.
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Chapter FiveConclusion
Refuge,an outstanding autobiographical memoir,has been praised as a classic inAmerican nature writing by the Western critics.And it shows people an unfailingcapacity for love and compassion.This thesis finds that Williams focuses her eyes onthe Great Salt Lake,the birds and the people living there to express her love and carefor nature,the western landscape and the female health,and to reconstruct the naturallandscape and cultural landscape through multiple memories.In order to explore theconnection between humans and nature from the perspective of landscape,the thesisfirstly retrospects the three lost natural landscapes by virtue of Williams’memory,including the rising Great Salt Lake destroyed by human intervention,the birdsencountered with dwindling species and near extinction in the Bear River MigratoryBird Refuge,as well as Women’s body landscapes constantly eroded by cancer.Thenthe thesis attempts to explore the causes of the problems from three aspects:human,governmental and cultural factors in patriarchal society.
Besides,the thesis also analyzes the invisible landscape in the book,namelycultural landscape mainly through Williams’memory.In the process of studying thelandscape reconstruction on the temporal dimension,this thesis tries to integrate andelucidate the objective,collective and personal memories of the Great Salt Lake basedon geological,archaeological and biological relics,mythological and religious stories,and sensory experiences respectively to reproduce the invisible landscapes.And underthe inspiration acquired from the invisible landscape,it finally reveals Williams’capacity to face and accept the changes of the human and nonhuman with calmness,such as her acceptance of the death of her mother and her acceptance of the risingGreat Salt Lake.Furthermore,in order to repair the relationship between man andnature,this thesis seeks out four ways to reconstruct the natural and spirituallandscapes,which covers seeking beauty in nature,seeking refuge in change toreconstruct the natural landscape,and rediscovering the instinct of love to all creation,fighting for women’s rights to reconstruct the spiritual landscape.
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