Humanizing Natural Environment in (Al-Wasmiya) Novel by Abdelaziz Mashri: An Ecological Vision in Light of Environmental Criticism

Abstract

Environmental or ecological criticism is the criticism that establishes a textual link between creativity, whether poetry or narrative, and the natural environment with its material components to produce stylistic connotations linked to the environment psychologically, socially and historically. Thus, the link will have an impact on the parties to the creative process, especially the recipient. This will contribute to humanizing and preserving the environment. Examples of preserving the environment include mitigating the effects of climate change, protecting terrestrial ecosystems, combating desertification, halting land degradation and the loss of biodiversity, especially after the exacerbation of the climate crisis, emissions and environmental pollution in the contemporary world. This environmental literary criticism appeared in America in the 1990s of the twentieth century (1987 AD) at the hands of the American (William Rueckert) in an article entitled (Literature and Ecology, an Experiment in Environmental Criticism). After that, in the last decade of the twentieth century, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) was established for environmental criticism, and it had a magazine and a newsletter. Al-Wasmiya Novel by Abdulaziz Mishri is one of the green narratives with environmental poetry due to its interest in the place and the natural environment of the village whose people were waiting for Al-Wasmiya as an indicator of rain time on their land and complete their natural life cycle in that remote part in the south of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Al-Baha region. This was in the fifties of the last century. Naturally, there is no life without crops and no crops without rain. The plot of the novel is based on depicting the village/ rural household and the peaceful life of the people and their connection to nature and its components and what it contains of rain, water, land, trees and stones in a reciprocal relationship that is sometimes identical and sometimes similar. The novel also highlights the impact of social transformations and aspects of civilization that began to appear after the flow of oil in Saudi Arabia on people's lives and their natural environment and the features of the conflict between the village and the city. Based on this perspective, the idea of this research has emerged to add an effort in the context of environmental studies of literary creativity because literature has a lofty message in spreading awareness and correcting the mistakes that humans have committed against this green planet by standing on the manifestations and aspects of nature and its relationship with humans in that novel.