生态批评视域下的《七个尖角阁的老宅》_英语论文

An Eco-Critical Interpretation On The House Of The Seven Gables

摘要

当今，生态危机日益成为人们关注的焦点。美国19世纪浪漫主义作家纳撒尼尔霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne，1804-1864）的第二部罗曼司《七个尖角个的老宅》（1851）围绕品钦和莫尔两个家族的历史纠葛，讲述了祖辈作恶及后代负罪救赎的故事。作品描绘了早期美国社会的罪孽历史，揭露了早期殖民者对自然疯狂的开发和掠夺及工业化社会发展进程中出现的社会问题。虽然当今多数评论家认为《红字》是霍桑最优秀的作品，但霍桑本人曾表示他更喜欢《七个尖角阁的老宅》，且《七个尖角阁的老宅》在艺术水平上并不逊色于《红字》，因此同样值得研究。此外，《七个尖角阁的老宅》中不仅揭示了人类对自然的破坏所造成的自然生态危机，还展现出作品中人物精神上更深层次的生态危机，从而体现了霍桑对生态问题、人与自然的关系问题的深刻反思。本文从生态批评的视角对《七个尖角阁的老宅》加以研究，通过对小说中自然生态危机和人物精神危机的表现，探讨生态危机产生的原因及霍桑解决危机的方法即人与自然和谐相处。

关键词：《七个尖角阁的老宅》；生态批评；精神生态；自然生态

Abstract

Nowadays, as ecological crisis has attracted the increasing attention of the public, the relationship between human and nature in literary works has come into the view of the ecocritics. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the American romantic writers in the 19th century. His second romance The House of the Seven Gables revolves around the entanglements of Pyncheon family and Moore family, telling the story about guilt, retribution and atonement. In the romance, Hawthorne reveals the ecological crisis caused by the early colonists’ plundering of the natural world at no allowance and social problems appears in the process of industrialization though the depiction of the social evils in early American history. Although The Scarlet Letter was regarded as the best among Hawthorne’s works by most critics, The House of the Seven Gables，as Hawthorne had expressed， was the one which he prefer. And The House of the Seven Gables is not inferior to The Scarlet Letter in the artistic level. Thus it is worth studying. In addition, The House of the Seven Gables not only reveals the natural ecology crisis caused by men’s destruction of nature, but also shows deeper spiritual ecology crisis of the characters in the novel, which reflects Hawthorne’s concern of ecological problems and the relationship between human and nature. This paper is to interpret The House of the Seven Gables from the perspective of ecological criticism, which is not often mentioned by traditional literary critics. Through the analysis of nature’s crisis and spiritual crisis of the characters, this paper is to explore the origin of ecological crisis and Hawthorne’s solution that human should keep a harmonious relationship with nature to heal the crisis.

Key words: The House of the Seven Gables; ecocriticism; spiritual ecology; natural ecology  

Contents

Acknowledgments i

Abstract in Chinese ii

Abstract in English iii

Introduction 1

Chapter One The Crisis of Natural Ecology 4

1.1 The New England Town 4

1.2 The Deserted Garden of the House of The Seven Gables 5

Chapter Two The Crisis of Spiritual Ecology 7

2.1 The Unamiable and Selfish Inhabitants 7

2.2 The Suffering Characters 8

    2.2.1 Lonely Hepzibah 8

    2.2.2 Traumatized Clifford 10

Chapter Three Ways to Heal the Grisis 11

3.1 Clifford’s Trayna Recivered in Nature 11

3.2 Holgrave’s Hatred Eliminated in Nature 12

Conclusion 14

Bibliography 15