《皮裹腿故事集》的绿色解读

A Green Reading of The Leatherstocking Tales

库柏的《皮裹腿故事集》是最早记录美国西进扩张历史的浪漫主义文学作品,描绘了自然之子纳蒂·邦波在北美荒野的精彩冒险活动,叙述了北美荒野让位于城镇、村庄的文明化过程,奠定了美国文学中的一个恒久主题:文明与自然的冲突。在生态危机日益严峻的今天,重读近两百年前库柏提出的美国进步发展史中的生态问题,为我们提供了培养在自然面前保持谦卑意识,重审美国"进步"概念的着手点。

As the forerunner of the Romantic novels recording the history of the American expansion of territory to the west,James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales depicted the exciting adventures of Natty Bumppo,the son of nature,in the wilderness,narrated in ambivalence the building of the towns and villages as a civilized process of the wilderness,and thus established the everlasting theme in the American literature:the conflicts between civilization and nature.Facing the severe ecological crisis nowadays and revisiting the ecological problems in the progress of the American history addressed by Cooper almost 200 years ago,we find that Cooper's texts provide us with a starting point to train our humble consciousness in front of nature and reexamine the American concept of 'progress'.