자연문학의 에지효과와 생태비평적 방법론

초록

Nature writing, which has been an ecocriticism's favorite, has less attracted ecocriticism's attention when the latter has shifted its thematic focus from wilderness to environment-related issues. Ecocriticism's relative neglect derives from its conventional understanding of this genre as the deposit of deep ecological wilderness ethic. By and large ecocriticism has not been interested in exploring real nature or places, environmental issues, and aesthetic aspects in nature writing. Unlike such ecocriticism's narrow concept of this genre, nature writing needs to be recognized as an ecotone, the joining of margin between humanity and non-human life forms, between the imagination and the physical process of nature approach, and between literature and science in observation and expression. Literary geography, which became popular in the 1970s and 80s as a method of geographical study, set a good example of academic approach of ecotone in its endeavor of melding literary imagination in nature recognition and expression to the study of geography. Along with its endeavor, literary geography's gradual tendency of resorting to imaginative and cognitive elements of fiction genre alone and its resultant failure as a viable study method can lead ecocritics to reconsider nature writing from the perspective of ecotone in concept and recognition of, study method of, and expression of nature and places.

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