Ecological Perspectives on Bret Harte’s Short Stories

Bret Harte, a well-known American realist novelist, is best remembered and highly praised for his short stories depicting the California Gold Rush. The unique quality of the stories, the distinctive style of writing as well as the humanism and ecologism embedded in his works are of great value. Focusing on the development of environmental awareness during the Westward Movement reflected in Harte’s works, this paper probes into Harte’s attitude towards the environmental and ecological crisis in the West by combining his works and the theories of ecocriticism and then explores the non-anthropocentricism existed in his novels to criticize the destructions made to the nature world.