Ecocentric polyphony: the subversion of dualistic thinking in Dylan Thomas’s poetry

Download

index.pdf

Date

2019

Author

Altındağ, Zümrüt

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

246
views

120
downloads

As part of its subversion of dichotomous logic, ecocriticism draws attention to the significant function the literary works can play in the process of calling for fundamental changes in the ethical values regarding the appreciation of the ecological interconnectedness between the human and the nonhuman beings. In this respect, post-pastoral literature and ecopoetry target dichotomous logic and try to revitalise ecocentrism. This thesis argues that prior to the introduction of these two recent ecocritical frames, as part of his struggle with the crisis of representation, Dylan Thomas portrayed a polyphonic ecocentric world and composed post-pastoral and ecopoems that attack anthropocentrism by restoring the bond between man and nature, and celebrate the nonhuman and the oppressed other as speaking subjects. This study discusses how Thomas’s quest for meaning at the chaotic modernist backdrop motivated him to deconstruct man/nature, culture/nature dualities and to problematise the hegemony of time over space in the poems published in Collected Poems 1934-1953. This dissertation concludes that as a precursor of post-pastoral literature and ecopoetry, Thomas established ecocentrism as the centrepiece of both his life and works, and called for global ecological consciousness by portraying that the world is actually operating on non-hierarchical and non-anthropocentric laws that urge the ecological interconnectedness of all beings.

Subject Keywords

Poets, Welsh, Duality (Logic) in literature., Ecocriticism in literature.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12622944/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/27908

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Ecocritical reflections in Jeanette Winterson’s the stone gods and Maggie Gee’s the ice people: redefining the center in relation to margins through ecological thinking Topsakal, Gülşat; Öztabak Avcı, Elif; Department of English Literature (2014) The aim of this study is to analyse Maggie Gee’s The Ice People and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods from posthumanist ecocritical perspectives regarding their approaches to the culture/nature dichotomy and the human relation to culture and nature. It is argued that in both novels the human is not represented as the master of the environment but only as a part of it. Both novels foreground exploitative systems that devalue nature and socially underprivileged humans who have greater risks of exposition to...
Socio-Spatial Politics of Otherness: The Desire to Construct a Counterhegemony Yoltay, Ece (2019-03-01) This study is based on an empirical research to understand the production of nongovernmental spatial practices and representations with a counterformation to an authority, as well as an ontological discussion on the relations between public space and power. In this respect, the study is constructed on an alternative spatial reading of counterspaces (LGBTI-friendly spaces, political spaces, and resistance spaces) in the capital of Turkey, Ankara, benefiting from Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of s...
A different approach to evolutionary ethics: from biology to society Aydın, Aysun; Sol, Ayhan; Department of Philosophy (2008) In this thesis I analyze the evolutionary ethics and propose a new perspective that develops on the notion of altruism. The view of evolutionary ethics, especially the sociobiological account, has some problems. The most important philosophical problem is the “is-ought” problem which refers to the question as to whether moral propositions can be inferred from factual statements. In order to overcome this problem I suggest a different reading of the notion of altruism namely “altruistic behavior practice” th...
Considering a Theory of Autopoietic Culture Boyd, Scott H. (2011-01-01) This article questions the predominance of pragmatism and fixed points of reference in academic paradigms regarding culture and proposes a theory of autopoietic culture based on a theory of living forms developed by the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. The central part of the theory of autopoietic culture is that culture, something originating with humanity and reflected upon by the same, is an autonomous and autonomic unity that is a network of processes and production of components that ...
Intuitive Generation: Rationalizing the "Irrational" Mennan, Zeynep (null; 2016-11-30) In the early 20th century, the organic paradigm has invariably been recorded as an individualistic, subjective and intuitionist process that escapes systematic analysis and rationalization, further banishing the organic from the realm of the rational and the objective. Today, the once hermetic processes of organic form are seen to become increasingly transparent as studies in complexity and computation develop. The historical unfolding of the organic traditi...

Citation Formats

Z. Altındağ, “Ecocentric polyphony: the subversion of dualistic thinking in Dylan Thomas’s poetry,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2019.