Comparing ecological imagination in Ahmad Tohari's fiction: An intracorpus ecocritical study from an environmental humanities perspective
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Existing ecocritical studies of Ahmad Tohari have generally examined individual works or specific environmental issues, leaving the continuity and transformation of ecological imagination across his fiction insufficiently explored. This article compares six analytical units comprising eight narrative texts: Kubah; the Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk trilogy (Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, Lintang Kemukus Dini Hari, and Jantera Bianglala); Di Kaki Bukit Cibalak; Bekisar Merah; Lingkar Tanah Lingkar Air; and Orang-Orang Proyek. Employing qualitative comparative reanalysis, the study examines selected textual evidence through Lawrence Buell’s environmental imagination, Greg Garrard’s six ecocritical topics, and an Environmental Humanities perspective. Textual excerpts are selected for ecological relevance, contextual clarity, and comparative
significance, while the prominence of topics is assessed qualitatively through their narrative functions and recurrence across units rather than numerical frequency. Dwelling, animals, and earth provide persistent relational orientations, whereas pollution, wilderness, and apocalypse vary across sociopolitical contexts. The findings identify overlapping agrarian, critical, and political layers of ecological imagination. Tohari’s ecological ethics thus develop through changing
pressures of deforestation, poverty, conflict, and infrastructure without abandoning human–nonhuman interconnectedness.
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