Refuge: Polyphony of Memory and Multi-dimensionality of Landscape

Abstract

Abstract: Refuge, an outstanding autobiographical memoir, is the masterpiece of contemporary American woman writer Terry Tempest Williams. It has been praised as a classic in American nature writing by the Western critics. Based on the related theories ranging from psychology of memory, ecology, landscape study, human geography to ecocriticism, this paper intends to explore the interconnectedness between landscape and memory, which aims to unravel how Williams reflects ecological dilemma and human ethical dilemma of modern society within her literary production through personal experiences and emotions. Confronted with the broken, incoherent and even lost landscape in reality, Williams attempts to reconstruct the landscape in the temporal dimension by virtue of memory and imagination, and reproduce natural landscape and cultural landscape by using multiple memories and writing out of the body. In this way, Williams appeals to humans to re-understand and re-experience nature and the land with their primitive bodily senses, re-establish the intimacy with the land, and re-discover the instinct of love so as to find the way to their spiritual home.

Key words: Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge, Landscape, Memory

Tan Qionglin, Deng Yingying. Refuge: Polyphony of Memory and Multi-dimensionality of Landscape[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018, 40(1): 47-60.

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