Nature in literature

The objective of this study is to compare Emerson's and Thoreau's concepts of
nature as they are informed by Immanuel Kant. In particular, this study examines
Emerson's Nature, The Transcendentalist, The Divinity School Address, The
Conservative; and Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden;
or, Life in the Woods and The Maine Woods to analyze how their ideas of nature are
anchored in Kant's three Critiques.
Emerson and Thoreau develop Kant's ideas and both arrive at an unlimited
nature which is not bound to objects of form. While Emerson focuses on human nature
in the organism, Thoreau is concerned with organic nature in particular.

Zora Neale Hurston is recognized as an important American literary figure,
but the majority of her fiction is overshadowed by the critical attention given to her
most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Just as her short stories remain
relatively ignored by critics, little is written about her thoughts regarding nature and
the human relationship with the natural environment. This thesis draws upon the
recent growth of ecocriticism and ecofeminist literary criticism in an attempt to
interpret Hurston's environmental thought as manifested in three of her early short
stories, "John Redding Goes to Sea," "Magnolia Flower," and "Sweat." In this study,
I show that even in her early short stories, Hurston's fiction is ripe with imagery and
narrative that blend the natural with the cultural while effectively illustrating and
engaging the interconnectedness between social inequality and environmental
degradation in the South.

Nature is an important symbol in Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. The metaphorical comparisons are interlaced within the colonial usurpation which fuels the novel into becoming an ecocritical statement, because without the health of the environment, both human and non-human species alike decay and die because of colonial encroachment. Shani Mootoo illustrates the ecological clash between the wetlands and the tropics through an intricate narrative involving people who are dominated by their environments and cultures, or lack thereof, which create great chasms to overcome. Through critical nature symbols such as the town of Paradise versus the wetlands, the cereus plant, the bugs, the birds, and the cat, important ecocritical connections can be made as to the survival of the characters and the island.

Intimate spaces play a key role in the development of human identity, constructing identity through an internalized experience of the house itself. Building on Bachelard's theories in The Poetics of Space, I argue that characters in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World gain a new awareness of self after experiencing nature as a substitute for the house. The emergence of a new identity occurs because nature offers protection from the forces that inhibit both D-503 and Keran's individual growth ; it offers the safety of the house that neither character is allowed in a private home : D-503 because of the panoptic space of the One state and Kerans due to the nature of the changing circumstances of the environment and his own biology that force him to accept his role as a "new" human and the jungle as "home".

This project focuses on the natural elements earth and water as presented in the works of African American author Toni Morrison. The primary texts analyzed are Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. In the first two novels, Morrison alludes to the abuse of black bodies by drawing parallels between the destruction of trees and the negative effects of urbanization. I argue that environmental destruction and urbanization parallels the disenfranchisement and killing of black bodies. Water in Beloved connotes bondage because of its historical link to the Triangular Trade. However, considering Morrison's frequent mention of water and the fugitives' constant need to drink, I argue that ingesting water symbolizes a need for psychological freedom. All of the novels that I have analyzed emphasize the complex connections between African Americans and nature.

The thesis proposed for my M.F.A. in creative writing is a collection of conceptual American short stories written in a variety of forms that properly suit their respective subjects. Like a handful of miscellaneous wild seeds scattered over a tilled garden, the goal of the project is to represent the wild asymmetry of Nature via a collection of unlikely companions. For this reason, the conceptual form of each story often takes root in scientific or symbolic representations of Nature (i.e. sine and cosine curves, the yin-yang, etc.). The plot of loose soil holding these collective experiments together is their earthy thematic focus-namely, the way in which Nature has been systematically backgrounded by western ideology. On occasion, a story's conceptual focus may stray from these ecofeminist principles, but only for the purpose of leveling a more critical or satirical eye upon common American ideologies.