In recent years, research on the Anthropocene has been a rage, but it is rarely

discussed from the perspective of ecological literature. The relationship between -

human and animals comes up repeatedly in ecological novels, and their views can be

roughly divided into two: one holds that humans are the center of all things while the

other advocates the rejection of anthropocentrism. I find that neither of these two

views truly understands the ethical and ecological significance of “actual animals.”1

My master’s degree thesis studies the metonymy of “actual animals” in novels that

depict epidemics, in which animals, serving as hosts for parasites, spread viruses and

impact the ecological environment and human society. Animal ethics is also involved,

from which I proceeded to explore the relationship between animals, ecology and

society. On this basis, my present project will delve into animal ethics and animal

rhetoric in ecological novels.

Literary works often discuss ethical relationships. Yet, it is worth thinking about

why literature is not limited to writing about human ethical relationships, but instead

extends the consideration of human ethics onto the animal world. Can the true

relationship between animals be characterized “ethical”? Does the behavior of

animals really reflect the emotions of loyalty, gratitude, etc. that humans project onto

them? I will explore the relationship between animal behavior and ethics in literary

works, taking the study of ethology as my point of departure.

Similarly, the relationship between animals, ecology and society is manifested in

the rhetoric of ecological novels, including metaphor and metonymy. My MA thesis

has demonstrated that existing research rarely pays attention to animal metonymy. I

therefore propose to continue to explore the metonymic relationship between “actual

animals” and ecology in ecological novels, and the metaphorical meanings of animal

totems in different tribal communities at the same time.

This article explores the material and symbolic representations of “mirrors” in the late Qing novel The Celestial Shadow of the Shanghai Dust (Haishang chentian ying 海上塵天影, 1896), analyzing their role in mediating shifting literati identity, 19th-century China’s historical conditions, and globalized exchanges of imaging technologies. While existing scholarship often reduces the novel to sentimental narratives, neglecting its innovative engagement with visual media, this article challenges the polarizing tendency of tradition versus modernity, East versus West, and literary versus material discourse. Instead, it highlights how “mirrors” serve as a central narrative device to construct a hybrid ethical vision for grassroots literati in a changing (pre)modern milieu.

The article’s analysis focuses on four key “mirror”-named objects: full-length mirrors (chuanyi jing 穿衣鏡), telescopes (yuanjing 远鏡), cameras (zhaoxiang jing 照相鏡), and the metaphorical "illusions in the mirror" (jing hua shui yue 鏡花水月). These motifs undergo interrelated transformations both as contemporary objects of sensory experience and as metaphors for the relationship between self and world. Simultaneously, the article investigates how these motifs are interwoven with the emotional narratives of three couples whose relationships deviate from previous scholar-beauty (caizi jiaren 才子佳人) paradigms in urban settings. These departures are intricately tied to shifts in materiality and evolving systems of meaning embedded in the mirrors. First, flat mirrors, once emblematic of Confucian, religious, and poetic traditions, become foreign goods in the prostitute protagonist’s room arranged in the logic of a global commodified social order. Second, telescopes evolve from extensions of human vision to precise scientific instruments, revealing the limits of sensory knowledge and the emergence of a new ethical framework tied to the literati protagonist’s national responsibilities. Third, newly imported cameras intertwine photographic technology and romantic relationships of diplomat families’ son and daughter, offering updated forms of memory and urban social hierarchy. Finally, the overarching motif of “illusions in the mirror” critiques past religious paradigms while articulating new cognitive models for interpersonal relationships, worldly affairs, and narrative techniques in a rapidly shifting era. By foregrounding the novel's textual complexities and its layered epistemological concerns, this article repositions The Celestial Shadow of the Shanghai Dust as a work transcending the past literary studies’ genre constraints of both prostitute novels (xiaxie xiaoshuo 狹邪小說) and early scientific fantasies, thus invites a revisit of late Qing literary modernity.

My paper proposes a comparative examination of the shifting boundaries between the natural world and the self in the poetry of Luís de Camões and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Separated by some four hundred years and the Atlantic Ocean, yet united in linguistic heritage, the two poets are emblematic of the idiosyncrasies of their spatiotemporal contexts. Though there is a promising foundation of scholarship comparing and contrasting the two Lusophone poets—primarily engaging with Drummond de Andrade’s direct interaction with Camonian poetics—there is an abundance of uncharted areas due to be mapped. In this paper, I explore how literary tradition crosses space and time, situating itself in newfound contexts to (re)address poetic topoi within profoundly altered cosmologies. The Renaissance lyric of Camões is equipped with a hegemonically epistemological treatment of the natural world, wherein poeticised ecology is employed as a tool for the poet’s self-discovery and, by extension, for Humankind’s domination of Nature. While, in Camões, the natural world reflects and refracts the moods of the poet, in the poetry of Brazil’s foremost modernist poet, it is a self-disclosive space of revelation. Drummond de Andrade’s work often incorporates the natural landscape into emancipatory critiques on the complexities of Eurocentric hegemonies incumbent both in the fabric of Brazilian society and of the world-system, hallmarked by the uneven field of literary transmission.

My proposal selects from a range of poetic forms in the work of the two figures, highlighting the drastic morphing of the sonnet between Renaissance and Modernist worldviews and cross-referencing Drummond de Andrade’s chronicles on nature throughout. By shining light on the ecological (un)concern that is embedded in their lyric, I approach and examine both the chasmic gulf between humanistic and proto-post-humanistic cosmologies, as well as the threads that tie together the Anthropocene to the natural world. The transition from one perspective to the other discloses the monumental shifts in societal configurations at two poles of the Portuguese colonial project. Methodologically, my argument will dialogue with the theoretical stances of Jahan Ramazani on the tensions of poetry in a global age. Through my paper, I will trace the ruptures in poetic thought towards ecology and locate the contextual breakages in socio-political approaches to the environment. More broadly, my proposal ultimately argues that aesthetics and ethics are inseparably entwined and, through the passing of time and the crossing of space, collective attitudes towards the natural world are significant reclamatory processes of individual and collective identities shaped by local, national and international ecospheres. As communities are increasingly faced with both local and global climate crises, it is imperative to bear witness to aesthetic developments in tandem with the ethical modulations of an ever-changing world.

Brazilian comic book artists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá’s graphic narrative 'Daytripper', published in 2011 by DC Comics, manifests a form of experimental storytelling which makes use of the unique ‘language’ of the graphic medium. This medium gives the narrative an ability to run freely through time, possibilities, and states of wakefulness and dreams, in a manner which is completely different from the methods utilized in a solely language-based text. 'Daytripper' explores the various ways in which its protagonist’s life and death could have occurred, weaving symbolic linkages through the chapters. Memory and experience are configured in ever-shifting ways that challenge the expectations generated by conventional graphic novels following a linear, ‘realist’ form of storytelling. Parallels can be drawn between 'Daytripper' and Gabriel García Márquez’s 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold', yet another work of Latin American fiction which deals with the event of death and challenges conventional ideas of realism, genre, chronology, memory, documentation, journalism, etc. It is possible to classify both texts under the genre of ‘magical realism’, and this has been done, but it is also possible and worthwhile to question this classification, examine its underlying assumptions, discuss the politics behind those assumptions, and critique the cultural essentialism and objectification underlying it. While the two texts deal with the idea of reconstruction and memory in very different ways due to the difference of medium, in this paper, while keeping the focus on 'Daytripper', the two texts will be read from a comparative perspective, that is, in relation to each other, in order to understand forms of non-realistic and experimental narration which, ironically, foreground the truth that there are always multiple possibilities, narratives, perspectives, and versions: of both life and death. Such narratives dismantle the norm-deviation binary which only permits or understands a certain set of deviations, and ultimately enshrines the norm as superior. The two chosen texts not only question the legitimacy of longstanding binaries by refusing conventional categorization and throwing light upon the reader-viewer's expectations while thwarting them, but also invite the reader-viewer into the narrative in order to create meaning.

A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession blends the imagery of the garden with the conventions of romance to reflect on and reconstruct individual and social ethical orders through a literary lens. In the novel, the garden serves both as a metaphor for the sought-after "Holy Grail" and as a concrete space where ethical conflicts unfold: from a fallen garden dominated by desire to a reborn English garden, the journey of pursuit mirrors the collapse and reshaping of ethical order. The Victorian poets and contemporary scholars, driven by desires to possess knowledge, love, and fame, find themselves entangled in various ethical dilemmas and tensions. However, the journey toward the garden implicitly charts a path toward ethical awakening: through a narrative that evokes Norse myth and immersion in the English landscape, the characters, in their cross-temporal dialogues, gradually achieve self-reflection and transformation. They reclaim a sense of responsibility toward tradition, nature, and the Other, thus enabling the reconstruction and return of ethical values. Byatt uses the "garden romance" as a mirror to critique modernity’s severance of ethical bonds, while the “Holy Grail” metaphor serves to reconstruct an ethical order—shifting from domination by desire to reverence and connection, and from individual awakening to a vision of harmony within the national community.