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. |
From inside the book
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... body and mind. I would like to thank Dr. James P. Chandler of the Department of Neurosurgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for his skill and kindness. As my daughter Margaret marvelled, “He had my mother's brain in his hands ...
... body and mind. I would like to thank Dr. James P. Chandler of the Department of Neurosurgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for his skill and kindness. As my daughter Margaret marvelled, “He had my mother's brain in his hands ...
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... body and soul were intensely debated. Among modes of thought that wedged these dyads apart were uses of allegory that detach types from particulars; aspects of neoPlatonism that place truth in a transcendent realm; theology (much ...
... body and soul were intensely debated. Among modes of thought that wedged these dyads apart were uses of allegory that detach types from particulars; aspects of neoPlatonism that place truth in a transcendent realm; theology (much ...
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... Body of this Great Nation . . . since, without their mutual harmony, and wellbeing, there can nothing prosper, or arrive at its desired perfection.”2 This advice has gone largely unheeded. Many seventeenthcentury poets did heed the ...
... Body of this Great Nation . . . since, without their mutual harmony, and wellbeing, there can nothing prosper, or arrive at its desired perfection.”2 This advice has gone largely unheeded. Many seventeenthcentury poets did heed the ...
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... body can be painful and brief and the workings of nature can be negligent, malign, cruel, discordant, and insufficient. The theological explanation of such suffering was that nature is tragically damaged, as Milton writes in “At a ...
... body can be painful and brief and the workings of nature can be negligent, malign, cruel, discordant, and insufficient. The theological explanation of such suffering was that nature is tragically damaged, as Milton writes in “At a ...
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... body of ascertainable facts capable of translation into unchanging and unambiguous language. His “Tables” divide living creatures into “things” by, for example, number of legs, method of reproduction, and kinds of usefulness to human ...
... body of ascertainable facts capable of translation into unchanging and unambiguous language. His “Tables” divide living creatures into “things” by, for example, number of legs, method of reproduction, and kinds of usefulness to human ...
Contents
Earth Mining Monotheism and Mountain Theology | |
Air Water Woods | |
The Lives of Plants | |
Animals Ornithology and the Ethics of Empathy | |
Animal Ethics and Radical Justice | |
Miltons Prophetic Epics | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam and Eve Adam’s allegorical Andrew Marvell animals Appleton House Bacon beasts beauty Bentley biblical birds body Book called common country house poems Cowley creation creatures divine dominion doth draining Dryden early modern earth ecological English ethical Fairfax fish flesh flow’rs flowers forest fowl fruit Fumifugium garden Genesis Georgics God’s gold Grew habitats Hartlib hath Heav’n heaven Henry Vaughan human hunting hylozoism John Evelyn John Milton kind land language living London Lord man’s Margaret Cavendish Marvell Marvell’s matter metaphor Milton monistic moral mountains natural history natural world nature’s Nehemiah Grew nightingale Nunappleton Ornithology Paradise Lost perception philosophers plants poetry poets political praise Raphael Ray’s reason responsibility river Royal Society Rudrum Samuel Hartlib Satan says sense serpent seventeenthcentury song soul species spirit stanza Sylva thee theology things Thomas thou Topsell tortoise trees Vergil vitalist wild Wilkins womb woods words writes