Cloud, Calf, and Cannon: An Ecological Reading of "War and Peace"

Hill, Ian

Cloud, Calf, and Cannon: An Ecological Reading of "War and Peace"

dc.contributor.advisor	Keresztesi, Rita
dc.contributor.author	Hill, Ian
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Condren, Dustin
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Zeigler, James
dc.date.accessioned	2022-04-29T21:23:01Z
dc.date.available	2022-04-29T21:23:01Z
dc.date.issued	2022-05-14
dc.date.manuscript	2022-04-27
dc.description.abstract	This essay engages in an ecocritical–spatial reading of Leo Tolstoy’s "War and Peace" focused on the narrator’s conscientious and equitable treatment of nature, animals, and topography. Where traditional historical–temporal readings tend to break the book into constituent elements, typically emphasizing Tolstoy’s historiography, this essay offers a synthetic reading made possible by an often-overlooked ecological theme. On a grand level, I argue that the narrator formulates the biosphere, not just humans, as his object of interest and defines war as a result of humans acting unnaturally and failing to think ecologically. More specifically, I argue that war and nature emerge simultaneously in "War and Peace" and appear intentionally fused throughout, that the book locates the practicability of war in soldiers subordinating each other as animals, and that war effaces the projective quality of landscape and forces soldiers to see and inhabit it as it really is—as unfamiliar and basically meaningless topography. I conclude that the narrator’s thoughtful depiction of nature, sympathy for animals, and respect for the reality of topography are core to the book’s rhetoric and form. To overlook these features is to overlook "War and Peace."	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/11244/335392
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	War and Peace	en_US
dc.subject	Ecocriticism	en_US
dc.subject	Russian literature	en_US
dc.subject	Tolstoy	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Master of Arts	en_US
dc.title	Cloud, Calf, and Cannon: An Ecological Reading of "War and Peace"	en_US
ou.group	Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences::Department of English	en_US