英语论文网

ational and personal trauma. The major themes of the novel, motherhood, history, manhood, mother-daughter relationship, and the psychological impact of slavery have been thoroughly studied by critics. Holloway (1990) argues that Beloved is one of the most effective documents in contemporary to revise the historical and cultural texts of black women’s experience. Rushdy (1992) also studied the novel from the perspective of history, discussing the interdependence between the past and present of black people. Teresan Washington (2005) studied the mother-daughter relationship in Beloved from the Africana background, using the African word Aje, indicating the spiritual force that is thought to be inherent in Africana women. Bernard Bell (1992) studied the novel from the black womanist point of view, discussing Sethe’s black woman consciousness. As the rising of ecocriticism, the ecritics have also shifted their attention to Morrison’s works, for nature has always been an eternal theme of her works as well. Kathleen Wallace and Karla Armbruster argue that Beloved “gives us the greatest insight into the history of African Americans’ experience with nature under slavery” (215). However, such insight has now largely been overlooked by critics. The ecofeminist analysis of Beloved can help to explore the interaction between women and nature, women and men, and men and nature.

In China, literary critics show a lot of interests to Morrison and her works. And Beloved has been studied under many perspectives as well, mainly following the routes of foreign scholars. But Chinese critics pay more attention to the feminist reading of the novel. Jiang (2002) studied the construction of female subjectivity and Wang (2008) studied the quest for identity of the female characters. Gao (2009) applied theories of psychoanalysis and feminism to analyze Morrison’s description of three female’s growth. And the ecocritical and ecofeminist study of Beloved have only begun to burgeon, with only two papers of the ecofeminist analysis on Beloved.

The present dissertation applies ecofeminist approach in the analysis of Beloved. Besides the introduction and conclusion section, the paper consists of four chapters. General introduction to Toni Morrison and Beloved is introduced in the introduction section, studies of the novel both at home and abroad are reviewed as well. Chapter one focuses on reviewing the theories of ecofeminism and Toni Morrison’s ecofeminist consciousness. Chapter two examines the victimized status of nature, black women, and black men under the shadow of anthropocentric dualism. Chapter three studies the recovery of black people’s selfhood through the perspective of ecofeminism. Chapter four analyzes the restoration of natural order in the black community based on the recovery of the individual selfhood. The conclusion part draws conclusions, points out the limitations and suggests directions for further study.

Chapter One Toni Morrison and Ecofeminism

As an interdisciplinary perspective, ecofeminism is a relatively new movement in literary criticism. It studies the relationship of women and nature under the anthropocentric and androcentric oppression framework. Although Toni Morrison refuses to be termed as a feminist writer, her works show great concerns about black women’s existence.
This chapter will briefly review the ideas of ecofeninism and discuss Toni Morrison’s ecofeminist consciousness.

1.1 A Brief Re本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。