Abstract:This article examines the prevalence and legacy of EcoGothic themes in landscape descriptions in fiction and poetry of the US Great Plains, including the recurring theme of prairie madness. Drawing on critical approaches that examine unsettling aspects of landscape description through the lenses of the anthropocene and the settler-colonial imaginary, I focus particularly on the authors’ attention to features of the Plains environment that destabilize non-Native settlers’ sense of place and control.From late nineteenth-century works of fiction to twentieth- and twenty-first century poems and even films, my analysis traces the lasting influence of an environmental awareness that goes beyond enlisting the prairie as a haunted or haunting place in the usual Gothic sense. Rather, what unsettles about many of these descriptions is, I propose, the author’s recognition of a clear power and agency of the landscape itself, existing independently of all human agency, exerting its influence over the characters, and ultimately defying attempts to capture its essence in words.

中文翻译：

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令人不安的风景：美国平原文学中的草原疯狂和生态哥特主题

摘要：本文考察了生态哥特主题在美国大平原小说和诗歌中的景观描述中的盛行和遗产，包括反复出现的草原疯狂主题。利用批判性方法，通过人类世和定居者-殖民想象的镜头检查景观描述中令人不安的方面，我特别关注作者对平原环境特征的关注，这些特征破坏了非土著定居者的地方感和控制感.从 19 世纪后期的小说作品到 20 世纪和 21 世纪的诗歌甚至电影，我的分析追溯了环境意识的持久影响，这种影响超越了将草原列为通常哥特式意义上的闹鬼或闹鬼的地方。相反，对这些描述中的许多描述感到不安的是，我建议，