Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Literature Review
According to CNKI, there are 867 entries relating to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including 15 doctoral dissertations. Many scholars focus on the linguistic analysis of this play, such as Wang Yingjun (2012), Xing Xiaoqin(2009), Wang Aiqin(2004) and Hu Jiangbo (2013). There are also many articles studying the characters in the play, such as Li Weimin (2004), Zou Huan (2013) and Liu Jihua&Zhao Haiping(2016). In addition, many scholars have carried out detailed analysis from various perspectives. For instance, Zheng Chang (2009) and Luo Xianyong (2015) study from the perspective of aestheticism, Zhou Xinyun (2013) and Dong Quanyue (2013) study from the perspective of translation studies. And there are also studies carried out from the perspective from psychology, such as Zhang Siyuan (2013). However, there is only one journal article which studies the play from the eco-feminism, i.e. Hao Miao (2013). According to CNKI, there are 2,241entries about eco-feminism, demonstrating the significance of this literary critic term. Many articles have also employed this term as a methodology to study a certain literary work, for instance, the doctoral dissertation of Zheng Chen (2014), who has analyzed the two translated versions of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the doctoral dissertations of Yang Pan (2013) and Yu Yang (2014), who have studied Gone with the Wind. Since A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one important comedy of William Shakespeare, which embodies many wise comments on love and life, studying the play from the perspective of eco-feminism will have far-reaching influences on the future work.
According to Proquest database, there are 4380 academic journal articles, 4099 newspaper articles and more than 4500 articles in academic journals. Especially, there are more than 7000 publishing works in the past two decades, signifying the great influence of this play in the academia. The scholars carried out their work from various perspectives, including Charlton (2005) who studies the work as a speculative political allegory, and Colin Mcginn (2006), who studies the play in its courtly context. etc. There is no article studying this play from the perspective of eco-feminism, but there are six e-books concentrating on these issues. For instance, Karen (2002) has presented a thorough analysis of literary works in the late renaissance. Therefore, studying this comedy on the basis of eco-feminism would be rather rewarding.
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1.2 Research methodology, significance and thesis framework
The eco-feminism is employed in this thesis to analyze the relationships between nature and women in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As the union of feminism and eco-criticism, eco-feminism studies the connection of nature and women in literary works and encourages a feminist writing of nature. Eco-feminists are fully aware that throughout the human society history, both nature and women have been in a status of being suppressed and dominated by man. This thesis evaluates nature and women from the perspective of eco-feminism, which will help the readers to understand Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from a new angle.
This thesis mainly consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 presents the introduction, including the literature review about the topic and the research methodology, significance, thesis framework. Chapter 2 presents the literary theories of this thesis, including the brief introduction of feminism, ecocriticism and eco-feminism. Chapter 3 presents the influences of patriarchal culture on Midsummer Night’s Dream. And particularly, this chapter analyses the patriarchal culture in English Renaissance, and furthermore, the hidden meaning of Titania’s rebellion against Oberon. Chapter 4 describes the influences of English Renaissance on Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this chapter, this thesis presents in detail the eco-friendly consciousness in English Renaissance which has great influences on the plot of the comedy. Besides, this chapter also describes the eco-feminism reflected in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Based on the above-mentioned analysis, Chapter 4 also showcases the author’s eco-feminist ideal. Finally, Chapter 5 is the conclusion of the thesis.
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Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework
2.1 Feminism
In general, feminism is an extensive definition of social theories as well as political movements, which is initially based on and motivated by the activities of women. Generally speaking, feminism provides a critique of the relationship between men and women. Nevertheless, many feminists also devote themselves to the research of gender inequalities and the promotion of women’s rights, status and so on. One of the main purposes of feminism is to improve women’s social condition.
The voice of women is heard as early as from the period when religious thoughts prevailed. In the early European social life of 16th and 17th century, marriage is the most important to women’s life. However, some women began to become literate, and learned various cultural knowledge. In the patriarchal society, women are not encouraged in the work of missionary work, music, writing and another related field. According to the Bible, the image of women is negative. Eve tempted Adam to eat the apple, leading to the fall of man; Jezebel swung the Hebrew belief in God, and made the Hebrews kill each other. In the end, they were executed. In the secular world, women also strive for their own rights and interests. Known as the most learned of the seventeenth century, British women, Bathsua Makin stressed, in her book On the Revival of Lady in Religion, Etiquette, Art and Language Aspects of Classical Education, that, women can only become strong by education, who should not be enslaved (Hunt,2008). However, in order to allow women to be able to successfully come to the classroom, she also points out that although women have chances of being educated, the time of doing housework is not reduced. At that time, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford refused to build a school for female students. When the females fought for their rights, they attempted to blur the inequality line between men and women because although they gained the achievements in literature, only the men were greatly praised for. Gradually, women began to be allowed to play a significant role in literature, but the basic content of the story is that, no matter how smart the female were compared with male, the female finally would compromise. #p#分页标题#e#
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2.2 Eco-criticism
As a kind of literary and cultural criticism tendency, the ecological criticism was formed in the United States in the middle of 1990s, and then appeared in many countries in the world. The definition of the term “ecological criticism”, the most widely accepted by most scholars, is advocated by American ecocritic. Namely, “ecological criticism is to explore the relationship between literature and the environment of criticism” (LIU& ZHAO, 2016: 31).
Ecocriticism is short for ecological literary criticism. And ecocriticism examines the relationship between literature and physical environment, it takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies. Eco criticism, literally, seems to be a combination of ecology and literature and art criticism, just as the spirit of analytical criticism or the myth of the archetypal criticism. Actually, it is not the case. Although some ecological critics cited some of the results of ecological research, environmental science research data, the natural scientific traits of ecological criticism are still not prominent from the whole point of view. Ecological critics are not the specific research results of natural science, but the basic idea of ecology, or more accurately, the idea of ecological philosophy. Ecological philosophy is the theoretical starting point and basis of ecological literary criticism. Kroeber has provided clear discussion on this point. He said: “ecological criticism is not the ecological, biological, mathematical research methods or any other natural science research methods for the analysis of literature. It is only the most basic concept of ecological philosophy humanities that is cited from criticism.” ( Krober, 1965: 26).
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Chapter 3 Influences of Renaissance Patriarchal Culture on Midsummer Night’s Dream ...............................15
3.1 Patriarchal Culture in English Renaissance ...............................15
3.2 Patriarchal Culture Reflected in Midsummer Night’s Dream ........................18
Chapter 4 Influences of English Renaissance Proto-Eco-feminist Ideas on Midsummer Night’s Dream ...................26
4.1 Eco-friendly Consciousness in English Renaissance ...................26
4.2 Eco-feminism Reflected in Midsummer Night’s Dream ..........................30
Chapter 5 Conclusion ..............................37
Chapter 4 Influences of English Renaissance Proto-Eco-feminist Ideas on Midsummer Night’s Dream
4.1 Eco-friendly Consciousness in English Renaissance
In the English Renaissance, with the influence of Renaissance humanism and the awakening of human consciousness, individualism and materialism have expanded extremely. The human has suffered from the mental imbalance, with both the spirit and the flesh of people suffering from the feudal autocratic and theocratic oppression of the middle classes. But because of the limitation and the infinite desire of human reason, a sensual material becomes proliferated. One of the manifestations of spiritual ecological crisis is the separation of soul and flesh, with the spirit pole representing reason, spirit and faith, and the flesh pole representing the sensibility, desire and instinct. The spirit of the state holding poles dynamic balance is a prerequisite for the human spirit of ecological harmony, which will result in the mental imbalance as well as the separation of people’s soul and flesh. It could distort personality and cause mental detuning. When humans began to set out of the medieval church theocratic barriers, they would face no restraint, with faith theocratic statute and human subjectivity. Their self-interests and dignity would be uplifted, and people began to believe that he was a “human God”, “with large amount of capital”, making them being able to create, enterprise and plunder, thus causing vitality greatly excited. Those involved with the development of industry and commerce are the first to get rich. They are the first among the feudal lords and the powerful people in the church, who are under the eyes of Satan as the life of the people. With their own wisdom, they possessed cunning and adventurous spirit. Almost with the spirit of God, they could turn from a beggar into a rich man with a blink of an eye. The human perceptual desire and indulge in worldly life have enjoyed the ecstasy and conceit, which showed their powerful and unconstrained style of self-confidence and unbridled ambition. On the one hand, they have the endless pursuit of material and irresistible creativity to promote the historical progress of the unstoppable force; but on the other hand, with the rational and material desires human awaken (Mcginn, 2006: 43). In this world of personal interest and desire to grab infinite indulgence, people tried to achieve their own value and pursue self-existence in the process of its value. They have fallen into nothingness and the paradox, resulting into the loss of faith, spiritual emptiness, confusion, and no confidence. The spirit of people’s ecological problems becomes more and more prominent.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
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