earticle

영어

John Steinbeck is one of the few American canonical fiction writers who describe real landscapes with genuine interest and concern, while incorporating natural, ecological, and environmental perspectives in writing. Such perspectives of his have greatly contributed to the fluctuations of his reputation through time as the perception of nature elements in literary works has differed in time. He was once hailed as a great writer largely due to his naturalism, but with the discoloration of overt naturalism in his work, his reputation declined drastically. Literary interest in his works rose once again in the mid-1970s when the tendency of evaluating his work from the naturalistic vein changed. The Steinbeck critics began to reevaluate his naturalism with different perspectives including ones that are somewhat similar to the contemporary concept of environmentalism and ecology. In fact, of all the American canonical fiction writers Steinbeck is the most potential environmental, ecological, and thus ecocritical writer, because he foreshadowed the basic tenets of contemporary environmental and ecocritical discourses. However, Steinbeck scholars’ critical interest in environmental or ecological perspectives in his thinking and works turned out to be only a fad. What is stranger yet is that ecocritism, which launched with the intention of calling for environmental and ecological awareness through the reevaluation of literary works of nature, has hardly paid attention to Steinbeck. This short-life of interest in and little acknowledgement of Steinbeck’s environmental and ecological elements both in the Steinbeck community and in ecocriticism are largely attributable to the related established recognition that Steinbeck is a fiction writer and that ecocritical tenets do not fit fiction. Comprehension of Steinbeck’s modern perspectives of environment requires attention to his non-fiction as well, and weaving such perspectives with his nature-human relations demonstrated in his fiction provides a more comprehensive perspective to ecocriticism whose narrow deep-ecological tenets have avoided critical interest in fiction genre. It is here that Steinbeck demonstrates a new ecocritical prospective.