- 上一篇：从《摩登家庭》和《喜宴》看中美婚姻观差异
- 下一篇：跨文化交际中英汉禁忌语的对比研究
6 Conclusion 9
References 11
Charles Frazier’s Ecofeminist Consciousness in His Cold Mountain
1 Introduction
1.1 An Introduction to Cold Mountain
Charles Frazier’s first novel, Cold Mountain, enjoyed enormous popularity upon publication in 1997 and received the National Book Award that year. Cold Mountain impressed the public and attracted hundreds and thousands of readers around the globe. Cold Mountain became a phenomenon in the next few years since the release of its film. It was made into a successful movie, receiving noticeable awards and good comments. Directed by Anthony Minghella, it was starred by Hollywood celebrities such as Nicole Kidman, Judy Law, and Renee Zellweger. Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, which conveys a yearning for a harmonious world through a fiction of the American South in the Civil War years, voices the necessity to adopt a new approach that values the previously debased women and nature, and preempts the inner antagonism coming with the alienated feature of patriarchy, so as to achieve a holistic world of interdependence.
1.2 An Introduction to Eco-feminism
Ecofeminism came into being in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was coined by Francoise d’Eaubonne in her work Le Feminism ou La Mort. For the first time, she paid attention to women and nature, hence the theory of ecofeminism.
According to Li Yinhe (2005), the main ideas of ecofeminism are as follows:
First, women are closer to nature, while men are generally against nature. Second, the creatures on the earth compose an interrelated network, in which no one excels others. And this point corresponds well to the ecological holism as I mentioned previously. Third, the co-existence of all species makes us realize that it is necessary to understand human-nature relationship, which also challenges the idea of binary opposition.
From the perspective of ecofeminism, we may find out how deeply humans are bonded with nature, how men and women are equal parts of nature, and how nature and human can co-exist in our world.
2 Literature Review
As Cold Mountain was first published in 1997, it has become an influential book both in China and abroad. Especially since the film Cold Mountain was open to China market in 2004, Chinese audience and readers began to give more interest to it.
If we mention Cold Mountain, we tend to think of Homer’s Odyssey. Actually, in an interview, Charles Frazier admitted that he re-read Odyssey before starting on Cold Mountain. But he didn’t intend to write a same story. He says "I realized that there were two kinds of books about a war: there's an Iliad, about fighting the war, and about battles and generals, and there's an Odyssey about a warrior who has decided that home and peace are the things that he wants" (Chitwood, 2004). In Ovid, Christians, and Celts in the Epilogue of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Emily A. McDermott (2004)keeps an eye on Inman's spiritual transforming and rebirth. They can be dated back "to pagan, agriculturally-based religious practice, focused on the annual natural cycle of death and rebirth of crops". Cedric Gael Bryant (2009)discusses the true meaning of life and death by studying Cold Mountain. He also suggests that life is a renewable act of burial and resurrection for everyone. In addition, Pan Xuequan (2011)carries out a comparison between Inman's search for home and Odyssey's journey to home in his The Odysseus Returning Home. Pan Xuequan combines the two works and discusses the home awareness from the perspective of ecological theory. Pan also paid attention to Inman and Ada's rebirths. Particularly, Paul Knoke (1999)in his essay Symbolic Artistry in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain explores the symbolism of crows in Cold Mountain. He argues that although in traditional culture, the crow symbolizes "bad", Frazier invests it with "good" at the same time. The relationship between Inman and crows has always been delicate. By coincidence, Li Yuan (2005)also analyzes the artistic expression symbolism such as the crow and the crossroad in his essay The Artistic Combination of Epic and Science—An Analysis of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. In terms of genre, Brent Gibson (2006)considers Cold Mountain as a "narrative of quest" in his Cold Mountain as spiritual quest: Inman's redemptive journey. He shows what is the spiritual quest and believes this work is a comedy rather than a tragedy.