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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... Creatures in Paradise Lost,” in 'All in All': Unity, Diversity, and the Miltonic Perspective, edited by Charles W ... Creature Kinship and the Language of Paradise Lost,” in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism ...
... Creatures in Paradise Lost,” in 'All in All': Unity, Diversity, and the Miltonic Perspective, edited by Charles W ... Creature Kinship and the Language of Paradise Lost,” in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism ...
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... creatures as servants of the human body and soul; the kinds of natural philosophy that treated animate beings as mindless mechanisms; and the kinds of experiment and classification that separated nonhuman creatures from each other and ...
... creatures as servants of the human body and soul; the kinds of natural philosophy that treated animate beings as mindless mechanisms; and the kinds of experiment and classification that separated nonhuman creatures from each other and ...
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... the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good. O may we soon again renew that song, And keep.
... the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good. O may we soon again renew that song, And keep.
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... creatures into “things” by, for example, number of legs, method of reproduction, and kinds of usefulness to human beings.9 When John Milton exposes the demonic potentialities of an ambition to subjugate the earth, the speakers are Satan ...
... creatures into “things” by, for example, number of legs, method of reproduction, and kinds of usefulness to human beings.9 When John Milton exposes the demonic potentialities of an ambition to subjugate the earth, the speakers are Satan ...
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... known when we break “the fair music that all creatures made.” The plan of the book Each chapter contains close readings of seventeenthcentury poems in their historical contexts of natural philosophy, protoscience, developments.
... known when we break “the fair music that all creatures made.” The plan of the book Each chapter contains close readings of seventeenthcentury poems in their historical contexts of natural philosophy, protoscience, developments.
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