由於人類大量生產有害環境的物質，導致全球各地生態環境日趨惡化，大自然反撲的現象不斷出現，除了人類本身，各種生態物種的生存條件也變得非常嚴峻。在生物學、環境學、政治學、人文等各個不同領域的專家不斷挺身呼籲之下，人們終於開始逐漸反省人與自然的關係，不該只是從大自然中剝取人們需要的資源，而應從整體生態體系思考如何維續自然的平衡。在文學方面，近幾年來奇幻文學作品在世界各地掀起一波波的熱潮，從星際大戰、羅琳的《哈利波特》到托爾金的《魔戒》都被翻拍成電影，形成一股流行文化現象。不論是成人或兒童，都可能被奇幻文學這特殊的文類所吸引，尤其有些奇幻文學作者試圖以這種文類中的另一個神話世界般的故事，來反映現實社會的缺失，促使讀者重新檢視人與自然、人與社會、人與人之間的相處模式，呼籲不再以人類為發展中心，重建人與大地萬物的關係、親近自然、尊重生態多樣性。
　　本篇論文以托爾金的魔戒三部曲和勒瑰恩的地海系列這兩部奇幻文學經典為探討文本，著眼於作者如何透過所建構的幻想世界呈現他們的生態意識。首先是分析文類的功用。托爾金和勒瑰恩皆以奇幻文學為媒介創造充滿中古神話色彩的世界，傳遞對鄉土的懷舊之情；並引導讀者改變人們看世界的觀點，進而改善人與世界的關係。第一章中土世界之旅，探討魔戒的中土地景；其所呈現的生態多樣化，如哈比人的夏爾及其地方意識、樹鬚、法貢森林、羅斯洛立安和魔多城等。應用托爾金所提到的：恢復、隱匿、慰藉三層次來看《魔戒》中的土地倫理觀。第二章地海之旅，先是分析勒瑰恩的地海特色，其次是巫師主角如何因語言力量從孤立到重回自然的歷程。之後以女性生態主義觀點分析女性角色的轉變，探討女性與自然在被男性主導的社會如何生存，並比較勒瑰恩和托爾金創作上的不同。第三章則同時討論兩位作者所描述的生態危機和發生的原因，托爾金是藉由樹鬚和索倫的對比，而勒瑰恩藉由地海世界的失衡來呈現。第四章以米克的喜劇精神，探討主角們從離家-冒險-返家的旅途過程中如何得到心靈啟示並重返家園，重新和自然共生共存。最後，兩位作者皆以主角們的行動參與，提醒讀者應積極面對未來日益嚴重的生態危機。

A great deal of ecological literature tries to eliminate the separation of humans from their ecosystem, to reconnect the reader to an awareness that humans are intimately connected to the world, and not simply objective bystanders. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earthsea Series are generally considered milestones in the genre of fantasy fiction. Both writers try to use the fantasy narrative to conceive a new paradigm for environmental ethics. In this dissertation shows how the ecological fantasies of Le Guin and Tolkien not only reflect the changing relationships between culture and the cosmos, but also exemplifies a way to live a meaningful and fulfilling life in an era of ecological crisis.
　　The first “adventure” is into the world of Middle-earth. In his landscape narrative, Tolkien’s sense of place comes through strongly and the interrelationship between the natural world and the characters display his ecological message—recovery, escape and consolation to the readers. The second adventure is into the world of Earthsea. The focus is on the moral dialectic emerging form the lands, people, and events of Earthsea. The discussion is divided into into three main parts: the landscape of Earthsea; the act of naming the world, and finally witches, wives and dragons in the Earthsea. The third adventure chapter focuses on the descriptions of the ecological crisis in Middle-earth and Earthsea, Threebeard, Saruman and uses balance as an “operational” term The fourth journey undertaken analyzes the how the central characters’ move out and away from the world of Middle-earth (the Land home) and that of Earthsea (the Sea home), to the place of their adventures in the forest, city or sea, followed by their return home to the harmonious earth, to the land/sea. The main characters undergo a similar experience, and through them both writers transmit an ecological message, which is the key to the survival of our own world.

Acaknowledgements          i
Abstract (Chinese)          iii
Abstract (English)          v

Introduction: An Ecological Reading of Fantasy Narrative          1
Chapter One: Earth (Land): The Middle-Earth Journey          22
Chapter Two: Water (Sea): The Earthsea Journey          69
Chapter Three: The Ecological Crisis in Middle-earth and Earthsea          114
Chapter Four: The Sacred Return Home: Re-integration into Society          151
Conclusion: Integration in Community          187
Works Cited          196

Berman, M. All that is Solid Melts into Air: the Experience of Modernity. London: Verso. 1983. 
Berry, Wendell. “Conservation and Local Economy,” The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. Ed. Norman Wirzba. Washington, D. C.: Counterpoint, 2002. 
---. Home Economics. San Francisco: North Point P, 1987.
---. “Margins” The Unsettling of America. San Franciso: Sierra Club, 1977. 
Birkeland, Janis. “Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice.” Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Ed. Greta Gaard. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. 13-59.
Brawley, Christopher S. “The Sacramental Vision: Mythopoeic Imagination and Ecology in Coleridge, Macdonald, Lewis, and Tolkien. Diss.” Florida State U, 2003.
Buell, Lawerence. The Environmental Imagination: Throu, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP. 1995. 
Burger, Douglas A. “The Shire: A Tolkien Version of Pastoral” Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film. Ed. William Coyle, Westport. CT: Greenwood; 1986. 149-154. 
Cadden, Mike. Ursula K. LE Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults. New York: Routledge, 2005. 
Coupe, Laurence. The Green Studies Reader. Ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. MA: Malden: Blackwell, 2004.
Crow, Charles L. “Homecoming in the California Visionary Romance.” Western American literature 24.1 (May 1989): 1-19. 
Crowe, Edith. “Integration in Earthsea and Middle-earth.” San Jose Studies 14.1 (1988 Winter): 63-80. 
Cummins, Elizabeth. “The Land-Lady’s Homebirth: Revisiting Ursula K. Le Guin’s Worlds.” Science Fiction Studies 17.2 (1990): 153-65. 
---. Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin, Columbia, S. C.: U of South Carolina P, 1993. 
Curry, Patrick. Defending Middle-earth. London: Harper Collins, 1998.
Dickerson, Mathew and Jonathan Evans. Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien. Kentuck: UP of Kentuck, 2006.
Dietz, Frank. The Literature of Emigration and Exile. Ed. James Whitlark and Wendell Aycock. Texas: Texas Tech of UP, 1992. 
Eaglestone, Robert. Reading the Lord of the Rings. New York: Continuum, 2005.
Elder, John. Reading the Mountains of Home. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1998.
Elgin, Don. The Comedy of the Fantastic: Ecological Perspectives on the Fantasy Novel. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1985.
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964.
Ezard , John. “Tolkien’s Shire.” Guardian.co.uk. Saturday 28 December 1991. 5 May 2009 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1991/dec/28/jrrtolkien.classics>.
Flieger, Verlyn. “Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-earth.” J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Ed. George Clark and Daniel Timmons. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2000.
Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm. Ed. The Ecocriticism: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.
Haraway, Donna. “Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575-99.
Heidegeer, M. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Heisenberg, Werner. “The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics,” The Discontinuous Universe. Ed. Sallie Sears and Georgianna W. Lord. New York: Basic, 1972.
Heldreth, Lillian M. “To Defend or to Correct: Patterns of Culture in Always Coming Home.” Mythlore 59 Vol 16.1 (Autumn 1989): 58-62.
Hogan, Linda. Dwelling: A Spiritual History of the Living World. New York: Simon $ Schuster, 1996. 
---. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1993. 
Isaacs, Neil D. and Rose A. Zimbardo Eds. Tolkien: New Critical Perspectives. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1981.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion. New York: Routledge, 1981.
Kolodny, Annette. Lay of the Land. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975.
Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge, M.A. Belknap P, 1995.
Lasseter, Rolin A. Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Spaces. Ed. Joe Debolt. Port Washington: National UP, 1979.
Le Guin, Ursula. Dreams Must Explain Themselves. New York: Algol Press, 1975.
---. Earthsea Revisioned. Cambridge, MA: Children’s Literature New England, 1993..
---. Tales From Earthsea. New York: ACE Books, 2003.
---. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” Landmarks in Literary Ecology: The Ecocriticism Reader. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens and London: U of Georgia P, 1996.
---. The Farthest Shore. New York: Simon Pulse, 2001.
---. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.
---. Tehanu. New York: Aladdin, 2001.
---. A Wizard of Earthsea. New York: Bantam Books, 2004. 
---. “World Making.” Dancing at the Edge of the World. New York: Grove, 1989.
Lee , Alan . “The Shire.” The Thai’s Book: An encyclopedia of Middle-earth and Numenor. 7 May 2009 <http://www.tuckborough.net/index.htm>.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine, 1966.
Malpas, Simon. Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolking’s Classic. Ed. Robert Eaglestone. New York: Cotinuum, 2005.
Manes, Christopher. “Nature and Silence.” The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996.
Mathews, Richard. Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Meeker, Joseph, W. The Comedy of Survival : Literary Ecology and a Play Ethic. Tucson : U of Arizona P, 1997.
Newman, Sandra J. “Becoming Dragon: The Transcendence of the Damaged Child in the Fiction of Ursula K. LE Guin.” Extrapolation 44.1 (Spring 2003): 32-44.
Niiler, Lucas Paul. Green Reading: The Land Ethics of Lewis and Tolkien. New York: U of NY, 1995. 
---. “Green Reading: Tolkien, Leopold, and the Land Ethic.” Journal of the
Fantastic in the Arts 10.3 (1999): 276-285.
Nodelman, Perry. “Reinventing the Past: Gender in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tehanu and the Earthsea ‘Trilogy’” Children’s Literature 23 (1995): 179-201.
Oziewicz, Marek. One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy 6. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008.
Payne, Tonia L. “A Heart that Watches and Receives”: Ursula Le Guin and the American Nature-writing Tradition. Diss., U of New York, 1999.
Plumwood, V. “Nature, self, and gender: Feminism, environmental philosophy, and the criticque of rationalism.” Hypatia 6.1 (1991): 3-27.
Purtill, Richard L. J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion. New York: Harper, 1984.
Rawls, Melanie A. “Witches, Wives and Dragons: the evolution of the women in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea--an overview.” Mythlore, Saturday, March 22 2008. <http://www.articlearchives.com/humanities-social-science/literature-literature/260268-1.html>.
Rochelle, Warren. Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2001.
Scholes, Robert. “The Good Witch of the West,” Ursula K. Le Guin. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 
Seeman, Chris. “Tolkien’s Revisioning of the Romantic Tradition,” Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference. 1992.
Selinger, Bernard. Le Guin and identity in contemporary fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P, 1988.
Shepard, Paul. The Others: How Animals Make Us Human. Washington, D. C.: Shearwater-Island, 1997.
Shippey, T. A. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. New York: Harper Collins, 2000.
---. “The Magic Art and the Evolution of Words: Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy.” Ursula K. Le Guin. Ed. Howard Bloom. New York: Chelsea House P, 1986, 99-118.
---. “Tolkien and the West Midlands: The Roots of Romance.” Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien. Zurich: Walking Tree, 2007.
Snyder, Gary. Practice of the Wild. New York: North Point, 1990.
Spivack, Charlotee. Ursula K. Le Guin. Boston: Twayne P, 1984.
Sproul, Barbara C.. Primal Myths: Creating the World . San Francosco: Harper and Row, 1979.
Swinfen, Ann. In Defence of Fantasy: A Study of Genre in English and American Literature since 1945. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Ed. Carl F. Hodve, William L. Howarth, and Elizabeth Hall Witherell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
---. “Walking,” The Portable Thoreau. Ed.Carl Bode. New York: Penguin, 1977..
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: Harper Collins, 1999.
---. The Hobbit. London: Harper Collins, 1999.
---. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter. London: Harper Collins, 2000.
---. The Return of the King. London: Harper Collins, 1999.
---. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.
---. The Two Towers. London: Harper Collins, 1999.
---. Tree and leaf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964.
Walker, Jeanne M. “Rites of Passage Today: The Cultural Significance of A Wizard of Earthsea.” Mosaic. XIII: 3-4 (1980): 179-191.
Warren, G. Rochelle. Communities of the Heart. The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool UP, 2001.
Warren, K. J., and J. Cheney. “Ecological feminism and ecosystem ecology.” Hypatia 6 .1 (Spring 1991) 179-197.
Wayne, Kathryn Ross. Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin and Language. San Francisco: Austin and, 1996.
White, Jonathan. “Coming Back From the Silence an interview with Ursula Le Guin.” 7 May 2009. http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/engl5H/leguin.interv.html
Zimmer, Mary E. “Creating and Re-creating Worlds with Words”. Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader. Ed. Jane Chance. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004.