Extracting Nature: Toward an Ecology of Colombian Narrative (original) (raw)

Towards an integrated methodology of ecosemiotics: The concept of nature-text

The aim of the article is to elaborate ecosemiotics towards practical methodology of analysis. For that, the article first discusses the relation between meaning and context seen as a possibility for an ecological view immanent in semiotics. Then various perspectives in ecosemiotics are analyzed by describing biological and cultural ecosemiotics and critically reading the ecosemiotic works of W. Nöth and K. Kull. Emphasizes is laid on the need to integrate these approaches so that the resulting synthesis would both take into account the semioticity of nature itself as well as allow analyzing the depiction of nature in the written texts. To this end, a model of nature-text is introduced. This relates two parties intertwined by meaning relations — the written text and the natural environment. In support of the concept of nature-text, the article discusses the Tartu–Moscow semioticians’ concepts of text, which are regarded as broad enough to accommodate the semiotic activity and environment creation of other animals besides humans. In the final section the concept of nature-text is used to describe nature writing as an appreciation of an alien semiotic sphere and to elucidate the nature writing’s marginality, explaining it with the need to interpret two different types of texts.

Nature, Culture and Literature: An Ecocritical Contestation

The Creative Launcher

Literary theory, in general, examines the relations between writers, texts and the world. In most literary theory, "the world" is synonymous with society-the social sphere. The two most influential schools of thought that brought about great remarkable changes in people’s perspectives and life in the twentieth century—Marxism and psychoanalysis have the common assumption that what we call ‘nature’ exists primarily as a sign within the cultural discourse. Apart from it, nature has no being and meaning, they claim (Coupe 2). This vision of nature as a cultural construct permeates various schools of thoughts like formalists, new historicist, and deconstruction - all of which repudiate the existence of nature outside the cultural discourse, and take is just as a sign. However, nature affects us in several different ways, and always remains influential in human life; it cannot, therefore, be dismissed merely as a linguistic construct, and from ecological point of view it will b...

Nature in Federico García Lorca’s Poetry

PARADIGM: Journal of Language and Literary Studies

One of the integral figures of ecocriticism, nature has been at the origin of incredibly flourishing critical interventions into literary works with a commitment to environmental justice. Such critical readings have as their goal to highlight the meticulous work that goes into the literary world's carefully hidden stylistic components. Additionally, it directs the poet toward an obligation to uphold the inviolable sacredness of nature, which is the foundation of poetry. This paper aims at understanding the concept of nature by reading a select group of Lorca’s poems to show that Lorca’s constant attachment to nature. This paper uses comparative study as the approach to the analysis since the paper observes Lorca’s selected poems. The findings show that Lorca’s poems provide insights about his love to Andalusia and also his love to nature. Thus, as a poet, Lorca can be understood as the ecocritically conscious poet of his time.

Nature and Civilization- a conflictive or complementary relationship

Both Argentinian/ Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888) and Cuban/ José Martí (1853- 1895) were personalities whose thinking and acting had an outstanding impact on the national independence and identity building process in their countries. On the first sight at least, Sarmiento’s and Martí’s ideological mind-sets seem irreconcilable: While the first admires the enlightened Europe, the latter strongly perceives the need for constructing a proper Latin American identity anchored primarily in local history and traditions. This papers aims at discerning how the two authors judge the interplay between nature and civilization, and at assessing if their viewpoints in that respect are really as opposed as supposed above, or rather converging, or even similar. To do so, I will first examine how both authors see the role nature and geographical patterns play in the identity building process of their people. In a second time, I will have a closer look at Sarmiento’s and Marti’s description of the natural man: How do both authors evaluate the importance and usefulness of the native’s knowledge and tradition for their countries’ emancipation from foreign influences and for their identity construction? Furthermore, I will examine the way Sarmiento and Martí describe and judge city life and people – is the urban space seen as a cradle for civilization, or rather as a hotbed for decadence and disorder? In the concluding section I will sum up the question if Marti’s writing can be understood as a direct critique to Sarmiento’s theory of Civilization vs. Barbarism, reclaiming a stronger role for indigenous tradition instead of westernization.