Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and MarvellThe focus of this study is the perception of nature in the language of poetry and the languages of natural philosophy, technology, theology, and global exploration, primarily in seventeenth-century England. Its premise is that language and the perception of nature vitally affect each other and that seventeenth-century poets, primarily John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan, but also Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Traherne, Anne Finch, and others, responded to experimental proto-science and new technology in ways that we now call 'ecological' - concerned with watersheds and habitats and the lives of all creatures. It provides close readings of works by these poets in the contexts of natural history, philosophy, and theology as well as technology and land use, showing how they responded to what are currently considered ecological issues: deforestation, mining, air pollution, drainage of wetlands, destruction of habitats, the sentience and intelligence of animals, overbuilding, global commerce, the politics of land use, and relations between social justice and justice towards the other-than-human world. In this important book, Diane McColley demonstrates the language of poetry, the language of responsible science, and the language of moral and political philosophy all to be necessary parts of public discourse. |
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Page 21
... sweet & plesant savours cam to their noses when they were walking , he wondering thereupon said thus . Forsooth Cirus the great beautifulness of these things is a great marvail to me , but I wonder much more of thim that hath measured ...
... sweet & plesant savours cam to their noses when they were walking , he wondering thereupon said thus . Forsooth Cirus the great beautifulness of these things is a great marvail to me , but I wonder much more of thim that hath measured ...
Page 22
... sweet , the which is caused onely by heate of the Sun ; it letteth the leaves fall to teach the husbandman , that it would be lightned and eased , that the frute may the better wax ripe . " Nature also teaches the work ethic ...
... sweet , the which is caused onely by heate of the Sun ; it letteth the leaves fall to teach the husbandman , that it would be lightned and eased , that the frute may the better wax ripe . " Nature also teaches the work ethic ...
Page 218
... sweet . " Though Adam , and also Eve's critics , would have liked her to leave it at that , this expression of human love as the source of all love nevertheless places that love in a circle of life , and when it appears to her that ...
... sweet . " Though Adam , and also Eve's critics , would have liked her to leave it at that , this expression of human love as the source of all love nevertheless places that love in a circle of life , and when it appears to her that ...
Contents
Marvell and the Language | 13 |
Earth Mining Monotheism and Mountain Theology | 43 |
Air Water Woods | 79 |
Copyright | |
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Adam Adam and Eve animals Bacon beasts beauty become beginning birds body Book called Chapter common Complete concerned created creation creatures death describes divine dominion early earth ecological English Evelyn expressed Fall fish flowers forest fruit garden gives God's gold Grew ground grow hand hath heaven Henry House human hunting idea John kind land language leaves light lines living London Lord Marvell Marvell's matter means Milton mind mining moral mountains natural world nature Nehemiah Grew Oxford Paradise Lost perception Philosophical plants poem poetry poets points political Press provides reason represents responsibility river Royal says sense Society song soul speak species spirit suggests things Thomas thou thought trans trees turns University Vaughan whole wild woods writes