The present study examines Allen Ginsberg's poe7ryr, essays, and interviews from the point of view of two basic concepts, self and ecological consciousness. Through this approach the study both develops a concept of ecological consciousness that is based on Ginsberg's poetry, and. provides an illuminating understanding of that poetry. From that reading the present writer has identified five major characteristics of ecological consciousness. They are: 1. a consciousness of the oneness, wholeness, and mutual interdependence of all life; 2. a consciousness of tine ecological catastrophe present in the United States; 3. a consciousness and openness to the physical details of one's environment and one's self; 4. a consciousness of the mutual. interdependence of self and environment; 5.- a total rejection of American class society with its emphasis on competition, winning, success, hierarchy, superfluous work, and vicious power.The thesis of the study is that Ginsberg's poetry represents an ecologically sound effort to explore, accept, and disclose the self. His poetry serves as a model for both self-exploration and ecological consciousness. In fact, the present study suggests that ecological consciousness comes to exist only through self-exploration.The study follows in close detail Ginsberg's voyages into the self. The first chapter, "The Self Explored," charts the whole nature of the voyage by putting the self into perspective. This is done in two ways: by using the insights of psychologists, Abraham Maslow and Erich Fromm in particular, and by using the insights offered in Zen Buddhism through the essays of D. T. Suzuki, and insights about the self expressed in the Tao Te Ching. Chapter two, "Three Vows," attends to Ginsberg's political, visionary, and sexual selves as revealed in three vows that he has made. Chapter three, "Language and Self," presents a detailed examination of Ginsberg's use of language, particularly his openness to physical details and his extensive use of modification; this chapter also develops a relationship between his language characteristics on the one hand and self and ecological consciousness on the other. Chapter four, "Self-acceptance: the Sunflower Self," explores directly the theme of self-acceptance in his poetry and relates that theme to ecological consciousness. Chapter five, "Peak Experience," develops the connection between peak experiences in Ginsberg's life and poetry on the one hand and ecological consciousness on the other.The conclusion, "Ginsberg: Poet of Self and Ecological Consciousness," highlights tenderness, gentleness, and passiveness as the salient characteristics of his poetry and of the ecologically conscious person in his approach to life and living.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2002. / Adviser: Elizabeth Ammons. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-207). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-347).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Delia Poey, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-186).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-220). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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"A Place to See: Ecological Literary Theory and Practice" approaches "American" literature with an inclusive interdisciplinarity that necessarily complicates traditional notions of both "earliness" and canon. In order to examine how "Nature" has been socially constructed since the seventeenth century to support colonialist objectives, I set American literature into a context which includes ancient Mayan almanacs, the Popol Vuh, early seventeenth and eighteenth century American farmer's almanacs, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu's autobiography, the 1994 Zapatista National Liberation army uprising in Mexico, and Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead. Drawing on the feminist, literary and cultural theories of Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant, and Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Edward Said, Annette Kolodny, and Joseph Meeker, I argue that contemporary Native American writers insist that readers question all previous assumptions about "Nature" as uninhabited wilderness and "nature writing" as realistic, non-fiction prose recorded in Waldenesque tranquility. Instead the work of writers such as Silko, Louise Erdrich, Simon Ortiz, and Joy Harjo is a "nature writing" which explores the interconnections among forms and systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression across their different racial, sexual, and ecological manifestations. I posit that literary critics and teachers who wish to work for a more ecologically and socially balanced world should draw on the work of all members of our discourse community in cooperative rather than competitive ways and seek to transform literary theory and practice by bringing it back into dynamic interconnection with the worlds we all live in--inescapably social and material worlds in which issues of race, class, and gender inevitably intersect in complex and multi-faceted ways with issues of natural resource exploitation and conservation.

As the quotation in the title of this thesis indicates, Douglas Livingstone states that unless humankind can learn to live in mutuality with the rest of the natural world, the human race faces extinction. Using the relatively new critical approach of ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism) this thesis explores Livingstone's preoccupation with "symbiosis or death" and shows that the predominant theme in his ecologically-orientated poetry is one of ecological despair. Countering this is a tentative thread of hope. Possible resolution lies in the human capacity to attain compassion and wisdom through the judicious use of science, creativity, the power of art and the power of love. Livingstone's ecological preoccupation is thus informed by the universal themes which have pervaded literature since its recorded beginnings. The first chapter examines the concepts of ecology and literary ecocriticism, followed by a chapter on the life and work of Douglas Livingstone, and a review of the critical response to the five collections of poetry which predate A Littoral Zone, his final work. The remaining four chapters offer an analysis of his ecologically-orientated poetry, with the majority of the space given to an examination of A Littoral Zone. The following ecological themes are used in the analysis of the poems: evolutionary theory, humankind's relationship to nature, ecological equilibrium, and ecological destruction. The latter two themes are shown to represent Livingstone's view of the ideal and the real, or the opposites of hope and despair. The analysis interweaves an argument with the existing critical response to this collection. This thesis demonstrates that Livingstone's crucial message – the need for humankind to attain ecological sensibility or “the knowledge of right living” (Ellen Swallow) and so obviate its certain extinction – has largely been ignored in previous critical works.