A Cognitive Stylistic Ecofeminist Analysis of Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer (2000)

This paper aims at analyzing an ecofeminist novel, which is entitled Prodigal Summer (2000), an English novel by Barbara Kingsolver, an American novelist, essayist, and feminist. This novel is analyzed through Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), which results in knowing the source domains and the target domains, which, by turn, affect the power relations tackled by Lazar’s (2005a) Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA). The novel undergoes, as well, Bednarek’s Modified Appraisal Theory (MAT) (2008), to figure out the statistical curve of emotions of the females in the novel in relation to the status of mother nature, and how females are related to, connected to, and identified with mother nature, especially that the heroes of the novel fall under the patriarchal society. The significance of this paper lies in its relation to one of the most critical issues nowadays, which is Ecology in general, and Ecofeminism in particular.