环境史视域下西方文学中气候现象的意义嬗变OACHSSCD

The meanings assigned to climates in the Western literary works correspond with the intellectual and cultural conceptions of their times,and the evolution of these meanings reflects the historical changes in the man and nature relationship.During the Renaissance,climate was understood metaphorically,with causal links drawn between climatic changes and moral norms and social order;in the Enlightenment when mechanistic science and theological ideas ran rampant,climate came to be seen as an objective natural phenomenon independent of human concerns;in the 20th century and afterwards,under the influence of ecological thought,global warming has been understood as a product of human environmental destruction and pollution.Climate fictions employ multi-scalar narratives to describe the unpredictable global warming.They associate global warming with individual lives and their existential experiences,trying to urge readers to change their ideas and behaviors.The shifting meanings of climates offer a thread for understanding the history of man and nature symbiosis;viewing these changes through the lens of environmental history opens a new pathway for examining the reciprocal relationship between literature and history.