【正文】 tead of the simple words and actions since they fail to powerfully convey it. One of Emily’s writing craft is that nature images function as symbols to show the characters’ psychological activities. Emily describes the natural images as if they can municate with people and as if they have feelings and sagacity like human beings. Nature has bee the symbol of characters. Especially in the confliction between nature and culture, it implies in this symbol: wilderness. Nature as Wuthering Heights In Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights, there are two places where 6 virtually the characters all the actions take place. From the symbolic description of the settings, the readers can learn clearly the characteristics of the owners of the two houses and foresee the hideous conflicts between the two families. These two places, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange differ greatly in appearance and mood. These differences reflect the universal conflict between storms and calm that Emily Bronte develops it as the theme in her novel Wuthering Heights. Emily associates the symbolic settings with the novel’s characters. And the meaning and the suggestiveness of these symbolic settings increase the readers’ understanding of the theme. Wuthering Heights is always in a state of storminess while Thrushcross Grange always seems calm. David Cecil maintains that, “On the one hand what may be called the principle of storm—of the harsh, the ruthless, the wild, and the dynamic。 and furthermore, is the place nearer to God. American environmentalist Nash Roderick argues that wilderness is not only the title for desert and droughty places, but also the symbol of moral evil。 social and spiritual ecology VII Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................. I 摘要 ..................................................................................................... II Abstract ............................................................................................. III Contents ............................................................................................. V 1. Introduction .................................................................................... 1 Literature Review and the Current Studies .............................. 1 Ecocriticism ......................................................................... 2 2. Confliction between Nature and Culture .......................................... 3 The Symbol of the Wilderness ................................................ 3 Description of the Wilderness that Reflects the Confliction between Nature and Culture ............................................... 5 Nature as Wuthering Heights .................................................... 5 Culture as Thrshcross Grange ................................................. 7 3. The Distorted Relationships in Wuthering Heights: The Crisis of Social Ecology ............................................................................................ 8 Alienation .............................................................................. 8 The Loss of Self: the Crisis of Spiritual Ecology ..................... 9 Catherine’s Identification with Nature ........................... 10 Catherine’s Betrayal of Her Identification ...................... 11 4. Rehabilitation through Returning to Nature ................................... 13 Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s Eventual Return to Nature .......... 13 The Second Generation’s Identification with Nature ............... 14 Return to Nature: The Way Out for Civilization ..................... 15 VIII Conclusion ........................................................................................... 18 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 20 1 1. Introduction Literature Review and the Current Studies Emily Bronte is remembered and extolled chiefly as the author of one novel, Wuthering Heights, which is regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces in the world literature. It is wellknown that since “Emily heat” and “Wuthering Heights doctrines” formed in the twentieth century, new interpretations of Emily and Wuthering Heights have e into a continuous stream. The Belgian essayist and poet, Maeterinck, says Emily is a woman who is expert in meditation and she is highly skilled in experiencing and observing what she has seen and heard. She has never fallen in love with anyone but she has already understood love and talked about it and got into its most incredible myth. (Cecil, 20xx:139) At that time many people judged this novel from the theme, the characters, the plot and the motif, such as these mon factors. It involves a lot of themes to talk: passion, love, clash of elemental forces, the clash of economic interest and social classes, the striving for transcendence, the abusive patriarch and patriarchal family, study of childhood and the family, the effects of intense suffering, selfimposed of selfgenerated confinement and escape, displacement, dispossession, and exile, munication and understanding, the fall. The universe is made up of two opposite forces, storm and calm. Wuthering Heights and the Earnshaws represent the storm。 nature and civilization。 關(guān)鍵詞： 《呼嘯山莊》 ； 生態(tài)批評(píng) ； 自然與文明 ；回歸自然和回歸自我 ；社會(huì)生態(tài)和 精神生態(tài) VI Abstract Emily Bronte was a brilliant writer in Victorian Period. Her work, Wuthering Heights, is generally considered a masterpiece that stands outside the mainstream of Victorian Literature. As time passed by, her novel Wuthering Heights, has gained more and more attention. Scholars study it from different views. However, few critics have done from the perspective of Ecocrit