Introductory Remarks

Abstract

In the current age of globalization, people are more and more worried about the phenomena of the so-called global warming and environmental pollution, especially in those developing countries where modernizing their countries in an overall way is of first importance and is sometimes carried out at the expense of overusing natural resources. Since literary critics and humanities scholars are also sensitive to the worsening of the environment in which we live, they have begun to respond to these phenomena in their creative and critical writing. In this special issue, most of the essays were originally delivered as conference papers at the International Conference ‘‘Beyond Thoreau: Literary Responses to Nature.’’ The others have been selected from two further conferences on writing about nature and eco-criticism held in mainland China and Taiwan. Obviously, it was the first international conference on the topic of literature, nature and environment as well as on eco-criticism to be held in China. The reason why the conference was named ‘‘Beyond Thoreau’’ is due to the following two aspects. First, as a pioneering figure in American literary transcendentalism, Henry David Thoreau was not only most concerned about nature and people’s living environment, but he himself took the initiative of living a unique Thoreauvian life, that is, simple and thrifty, far from the madding crowd of industrial metropolitan life, which is nowadays followed by quite a few intellectuals and humanities scholars. Thus, Thoreau has been regarded as a pioneering figure of contemporary nature writing and even eco-criticism. Second, as a contemporary resurgent literary and critical movement, eco-criticism finds its origin in Thoreau and other nature writers, for instance, in Tao Yuanming in ancient China and in Gary Snyder in contemporary America. Consequently, to discuss issues concerning writing about nature and the environment and eco-criticism should go beyond Thoreau