Nature in Literature Essay

temperament is one of the around healthy forces that has ran through literature throughout charitable history. Ever since the first recorded dramas and philosophical inclines, man could non avoid creation in contact with the world most him, and so his connection to the earth moldiness inevitably be part of his story. In literature, when belief is addressed, it is much in adulation or awe, of its terror or of its beauty. record can represent the real and visceral as sound as the rarefy and the mystic.If one examines the carteer of the Transcendentalists, the sentimentalist Poets, and received novelists, it is evident that the underlying hint is that spirit provides inspiration and bliss, as intimately as a much- guideed refuge from society. One of the scoop out known schools of thought which dealt with Nature in literature is Transcendentalism. The Transcendentalist social movement began in the States in the 1800s. Transcendentalists believed that the divine could be reached through temperament, by any man.The hallmark work of the movement was Ralph Waldo Emersons Nature. The most noneworthy section of the work is when Emerson recalls an recognize he had in the woods, and says I become a transparent eye-ball. . . . I see all. The currents of the common Being circulate through me I am part or mite of God. (Cromphout 210) Emerson tapped into an experience of non-being, connecting on a strictly spiritual level through disposition, without need of church or religion.Equally celebrated is Henry David Thoreaus work Walden. In this classic, Thoreau captures the spirit of temper, solitude, and finding joy in twain. As an experiment, Thoreau left society and went to lie in in a cabin on Walden Pond. In this historied statement, Thoreau sums up the tutelage of his experiment I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the ingrained facts of life, and see if I could not study what it had to teach, and n ot, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ..I wanted to live bass and suck out all the center of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad whack and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. (Thoreau 5)He was making a stand against the materialism and convoluted constitution of society- Our life is frittered away by detail, simplify, simplify, he says. For him nature represented the bare essentials- trees, rock, hunger, lust the things that lay behind the trappings of society.He took immense joy in the solitude and beauty of his life at Walden Pond. He farmed, observed, and lived in harmony with nature. Walden opened muckles eyes and inspired them, and index be the most classic character of nature in literature. Another Transcendentalist, the most radical and wonderfully incendiary, was Walt Whitman. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was scripted in free write and was seen as controversial and even begrimed by the uptight psycheuals of the day. The essence of his work is a deep oneness with nature, having no shame in being, and joy in what can be seen and felt.In strain of Myself, he says, I am cheerful I see, dance, laugh, sing. The play of shine and tone of voice on the trees as the supple boughs wag The feeling of health the full-noon trill the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. (Whitman 12) For Whitman, nature is all he needs, he takes unending joy in being, tempering the intellect with natural physical pleasures. An equally beta school of thought was the romanticistic movement in Europe. Romanticism grew out of a rebellion against the Enlightenment and its stark intellectualism.Instead, love story revolves around passion, emotion, nature, mystery, turmoil, and all the qualities of life that were not constrained by reason. Nature religious mysticism was one of the most important aspects of the movement. (Micale 14 0) The romantics preferent the country and the wilderness to the city, and loved both gentle, pastoral landscapes as well as the turbulent, tremendous, dramatic, and exotic. (Micale 150) Of course, literature was at the core of the Romantic movement, and the love of nature is reflected in its works.An small example of the sublime side of nature is free-base in the work of the somber literary figure Ossian, who influenced so many of the romantic writers. Ossian was actually the sparing poet pack Macpherson(1736-1796) who wrote a collection of ancient Scottish poems, claiming to be word-of-mouth folk tales, save it is supposed that he wrote them himself. (Simonsuuri 192) The poems involved misty, windblown, raspy landscapes and moonlight, and the romantic images and ideas he brought about captured the mood of society and of individuals such as Goethe, Napoleon, and Jefferson.(Simonsuuri 287) plurality were drawn to this exotic, wild side of nature and the worlds that it co njured. An example of the unfledged, pastoral side of nature in romantic literature is establish in William Blakes Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In the poem Laughing Song, he saysWhen the green woods laugh with the voice of joyAnd the dimpling burgeon forth runs laughing by,When the air does laugh with our grand wit,And the green hill laughs with the noise of it. (Blake 28) In Songs of Innocence, Blake connects the lovely landscape with youth, joy, and happiness.In his poetry, the countryside represents purity and all things good, while the city represents experience and disillusionment. In conclusion, nature is one of the strongest forces found in literature. Men have written about the natural world and how it affects them for centuries, and allow for continue to do so. In Europe, Nature was at the core of the Romantic movement. Their works reflect both the stormy and sublime side of nature as well as the peaceful and pastoral. Either way, the romantics were travel t o bliss and rapture by the beauties they byword around them.In America, a equivalent movement took place with the Transcendentalists, who believed that the unifying spirit in all things could be reached now through nature. In literature, nature is often perceived with some amount of mysticism. To man, nature represents all that is not machine and society, it represents a state of freedom, passion, and beauty. If one examines the work of the Transcendentalists, the Romantic Poets, and certain novelists, it is evident that the underlying feeling is that Nature provides inspiration and bliss, as well as a much-needed refuge from society. book of account count 1100.