• 수완나부미
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• 제13권1호
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• pp.135-159
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• 2021

Thơ mới (Vietnamese New Poetry, 1932-1945) is a literary movement in colonial Vietnam that is broadly considered to have marked the modernization of Vietnamese literature. This paper examines depictions about natural disasters, ecological wounds, and about relationships between humans and nature in New Poetry, asking how those descriptions reflect social and political issues in colonial Vietnam. The paper argues that ecocriticism, developed in Western academy, brought to the New Poetry Movement new meanings, associated with a material world. That is the specific reality of colonial Vietnam in the early twentieth century, when the colonial modernization resulted in natural and social collapses in the area. This approach is especially significant, given that New Poetry is largely seen as the embodiment of the expansion of Western romanticism by Vietnamese scholars. Moreover, in examining Thơ mới (Vietnam) from perspective of ecocriticism, this paper extends the ecocritical approach to non-Western literatures. Specifically, although ecocriticism developed in the West, particularly in United States and England, it has become an effective approach to non-Western literatures, particularly since the early twentieth first century. In this context, Asian literatures, particularly Southeast Asian literatures, potentially offer ecocriticism new meanings, many of which are associated with local social and political conditions and histories.

• 수완나부미
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.245-270
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• 2023

Many publications of ecocritical research papers and translations of ecocriticism occur in Vietnam in recent years. This paper examines ecocritical scholarly writing in Vietnam, understanding how it corresponds to-reflects and attends to-contemporary Vietnamese society and politics. Specifically, this paper contextualizes Vietnamese ecocriticism in contemporary social and political concerns-embodied in journalistic and administrative documents-about the modernity-oriented postcolonial nation-building of Vietnam. In revealing critiques of political and social degenerations implied in ecocritical writings in Vietnam, this paper suggests that the emergence of ecocriticism in present-day Vietnam indicates a recent "political turn." More importantly, such emergence reflects and engages with the continuing Marxist perspective of literature as an instrument for social criticism and cultural revolution in Vietnam. Vietnamese ecocritics bear the mission of prophets of the time, public educators, and soul engineers, writing is an act of engaging with and influencing reality. Writing (literary and scholarly) still forms an idealized ideological instrument in the struggles for national homogeneity and sovereignty and social democracy in present-day Vietnam.

• 영어영문학
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• 제54권1호
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• pp.31-60
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• 2008

As a way to situate environmental literary study, urban nature recently seems to have become an increasingly important part of ecocritical studies. Considering the recent deprecation on the alleged ecocriticism's ecocentric position, this move looks promising. However, a scrutable review of recent publications of ecocritical studies reveals a contradicting result that an ecocritical approach to urban nature not only lacks substance but also makes too much of the cultural and political issues of 'environmental justice' in which the traditional value and beauty of nature is totally sacrificed and neglected for its political purpose. Under the current circumstance that the environmental crisis threatens all landscapes of wild, rural, and urban, ecocriticism needs to put together "green" landscapes of wildness and "brown" landscapes of urban environment. The interdependence between outback and urban landscapes is best observed in suburban areas in which both landscapes coexist and merge. Provided with due learning and attention of nonhuman environment in their backyard, suburban residents have privilege of both appreciating nature's beauty and value of its own, on the one hand, and acutely reckoning urban environmental concerns related to their health, safety, and sustenance, on the other, in their own home grounds. The post-1980s in the United States has witnessed the emerging voices of suburban nature writings that speak for both green and brown landscapes, which have escaped from ecocritical attention. Among the suburban nature writings, those of Michael Pollan and Thomas Mitchell well illustrate how the green and brown landscapes are interwoven and, accordingly, how environmental awareness of both landscapes can start in suburban 'home.' Ecocriticism's validation as relevant studies of literature and environment may depend on these suburban nature writings which demonstrate an 'ancient-future' ethic of "home" based environmentalism.

• 영어영문학
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• 제57권2호
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• pp.237-264
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• 2011

Based on its geophysical feature, the island has long been recognized as a separate and self-sustaining space independent of neighboring continent or other islands. Literary tradition has used the island as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to mundane human society with its various kinds of wrongdoings. Recent nature writings have taken up this island metaphor to emphasize the wholeness of the ecosystem in specifically designated natural community or landscapes such as national parks or wilderness preservation areas. Human-nature relations as border-divided area is also recognized as the island. Modern island biogeography, however, has disproved such a concept of islands as autonomous, revealing the contrasting fact that the richness of species on an undisturbed island is determined largely by species immigration from and emigration to a source of colonists. This scientific finding has posited the island as the interconnected nature, but the public and metaphoric use of it still resorts to the old concept of it as isolated and autonomous nature, because this image has been ingrained deeply in our consciousness and culture. Considering the negative consequences from the recognition of nature and nature-humans as isolated space, we need a new nature metaphor that embodies interconnectedness in nature and of human-nature relations. Such feature of interconnectedness is best embedded in the concept of ecotone. Some ecotones are created and maintained through human participation in nature, and this human induced nature of ecotone denotes the possibilities of a constructive relation between them. The substitution of the island with the ecotone as the concept of nature and the image of human-nature relations is expected to correct ecocritical practices of reading of nature writing, which has been predominantly interpreted within the orientation of nature itself and nature-human relations as an isolated and self-autonomous island. Adopting the ecotone in literary study enables ecocriticism to dig out cultural elements embedded in nature writing and reveal socio-political, ideological factors hidden behind the writers' portrayal of nature as islands.

• 수완나부미
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.31-52
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• 2022

Derived from the juxtapositional model of Comparative Literature, this article analyzes two movies, The Story of Pao (Chuyện của Pao, directed by Ngô Quang Hải) and Into the Wild (directed by Sean Penn), using eco-criticism and focusing on two specific aspects: looking for the relationship between "culture" and "nature" and questioning the ideology that puts people at the center of the natural world. Specifically, the article points out similar tones in discovering and praising the beauty of nature, and at the same time, focuses on explaining the "disagreement" and "harmony" in behaviors of different communities towards Mother Nature in these two films. Finally, The Story of Pao and Into the Wild are both read as discourses that participate in the repositioning of human beings in the natural world. The purpose of juxtaposition, therefore, is to seek a new existential dimension for the works, providing an opportunity to uncover and reveal hidden layers of meaning of each text.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.209-233
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• 2009

Many difficult literary texts have been disregarded by the teachers as well as the students in the EFL context. The abridged version, however, has its pedagogical usability when viewed as an extension of the literary text like movies and comic strips. Legible abridgments boost up the critical mind among the learners by enhancing their involvement in responding more actively to each class. In addition, to study an abridged version makes the future teachers accustomed to use it as a usable material. Abridgment has its efficacy in the literary study, too: reader-response criticism and narrative scholarship. First, the learners' creative engagement to the text encourages them to draw their personal experiences which are made up of the basic storyline. Second, a personal experience linked to the story has a relationship to narrative scholarship proposed in contemporary ecocriticism. Narrative scholarship is a new academic trend that merges the writer's personal experience in physical surroundings with the text which describes the same or similar natural environment. The role of teachers is a key to succeed in the abridged version pedagogy. They can facilitate a web of learner, text, and social context by providing a friendly atmosphere to encourage students' active participation, as well as supplementary materials of the original text.

• 한국환경교육학회지:환경교육
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.44-54
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• 2005

The emphasis in environmental education for children should be on awareness, appreciation, and sensory experiences. By offering children opportunities to experience the elements of nature that surround them, teachers elevate children's comfort level and familiarity with the natural world. But many children have little contact with nature, because of urban living, hurried schedules, TV's attraction, and the low value most schools place on outdoor activities. So, teachers have to expand the real out-of-door experiences into the classroom by sharing and making accessible books focusing on nature and the natural environment. Namely, quality children's literature is an excellent vehicle for extending a particular experience or introducing new ones. Building on outdoor experiences through stories encourages children to explore more deeply what they have observed and experienced-concepts are reinforced, new knowledge gained, vicarious experiences provided. There are three-fold classification of environmentalism, especially environmental ethics, and three-aspects of the history in children's literature. The analytical results of this study are as follow. The environmental ideology in elementary Korean textbooks varies from 'egocentrism-didacticism' to 'ecocentrism-fantasy'. This finding has implication for selecting children's books and teaching environmental contents in elementary school. Therefore teachers and parents need to get ready to receive ecocriticism.

• 영미문화
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.127-147
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• 2010

In Faulkner's many works, most Mulattoes are represented as tragic characters who feel confused with their racial identity and are sacrificed by the Southern racism in the end. However, in Go Down, Moses Lucas Beauchamp is an exceptional mulatto in that he survives the Southern racism and achieves some dignity as a human. It is because he maintains the relationship with his family and environment as a skilled farmer. Although Southerners idealized their lives in plantations as nature-friendly and ecological way of life, plantation owners had little direct relationship with land as plantations were cultivated by black slaves' labor. Therefore, white landowners had little knowledge about cultivation and ecological awareness. Although Lucas Beauchamp is criticized as he has the strong will to power and patriarchal attitude, it is partly caused from endeavor to overcome the suppression as a black male whose masculinity is denied in the Southern society. In spite of his limitation, he shows the possibility to escape from the curse prevailing in the South, which abuses land and other races through the relationship with others and land. He has positive aspects in that he has genuine relationship with land and others and takes his responsibility for others, searching the most suitable way to survive as a black.