133

Manh Mai The is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Pedagogy at Thu Dau Mot University, where he teaches and conducts research related to foreign literature. He is also a PhD student at the Faculty of Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. E-mail: manhmt@tdmu.edu.vn

Abstract: Nature is both the material and creative space of literature. In Western literature, since the Greco-Roman period, attempts have been made to explain the relationship between humans and nature. Still, throughout history, up to the end of the eighteenth century, as religious concepts and ideas developed, people lost their sense of belonging to nature By the Romantic period in the 19th-century Europe, nature in its material form emerged as a privileged medium to describe a place where the human was liberated from the institutions of tradition, religion, and society. Since this theme was initiated by the Romantics, there has been a wave of emotional development, fueling a powerful desire for unity and harmony with nature that has now been reawakened. Meanwhile, Eastern literary traditions in general, and those of Southeast Asia in particular, inherently share the concept of “unification of nature and man,” that is, a personification of nature, and advocate for an integration of the human spirit into the world. This paper uses ecocriticism and the naturalist concepts of Romanticism to look at works such as Behind the Painting by Sri Boorapha and Midway Through Spring by Khai Hung. Its aim is to clarify the artistic features of these Romantic novels, as they describe nature while simultaneously expressing the overall harmony between nature and humans.

Keywords: