기후변화 담론으로서의 소설의 수사학 - 바바라 킹솔버의 『도피습성』

초록

Of environmental problems and issues, climate change especially has escaped ecocritical attention. Ecocriticism’s negligence is often attributed to uncertainties and complexities with regards to the scales and the cause-effect relationship of climate change, along with econo-political interests among interests groups and nations. However, a closer examination of ecocriticism reveals a new fact that such negligence is already embedded in ecocriticism’s persistent emphasis on individual responsibility and moral reform toward eco-friendly life. Ecocriticism’s call for ethical decisions and practices on the part of each individual unfortunately is not particularly effective, considering that recent studies and surveys have shown that the majority of people does not take consequences of climate change as their own responsibilities. This further indicates that ecocriticism needs to pay attention to a new rhetorical strategy and a relevant literary genre. Instead of directly urging readers to comply with the authors’ ideas and causes, fiction writing does not drag readers to the authors’ environmental causes; instead, through the intimate and personal details of a character’s life, fiction genre indirectly invites readers to think about issues like climate change, the issues that they maybe did not know they needed to know. Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 canonical novel that deals with the biotic consequences of climate change, is a good example to examine such a descriptive and rhetorical strategy.

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