The Role of Nature in English Literature

Nature has always taken a great part in peoples lives, and the universe, as a whole,
was seen as a perfectly ordered system of concentric circles where the Earth, and nature
itself, was at its center. Each of the circles corresponded to the orbit of known planets, with
the stars at the outer level. Nature, as a concept, was seen as a deep state of harmony between
itself and its inhabitants. In nature, time has had little or no effect on everything that it
contains, and the relativity of time was proven by Albert Einstein, everything grows and dies
just because it has to come back to life again. Nature is better described by the Heraclitus
philosophy panta rei, meaning that everything flows, or everything is constantly changing,
from the smallest grain of sand to the stars in the sky. Also, nature is perfect, and its
perfection is given by the relationship of all its elements.
Nature is also Heavens reflection on Earth and anyone trying to disturb the natural
order is considered evil. Mans attempts to rule this world as it was his, have caused
disturbances in this natural environment and this harmony has started to fail. In the
Renaissance there were two conflicting ways of looking at nature. On one hand, the view
inherited from the Middle Ages was that, since Adam and Eves ejection from Paradise,
nature had become degraded and degrading. On the other hand, the Greek and Roman
literature that inspired Renaissance writers often depicted pastoral life as more virtuous than
city life. For instance, Shakespeares writing is rich in natural imagery.
The age of Enlightenment saw an explosion on interest in nature as an object of
scientific study. Natural philosophers, like Newton, demonstrate the systematic orderly aspect
of nature. The ordered perfection of the natural world, he argued, presupposed the existence
of God. For Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, the English countryside was a constant
source of poetic inspiration. At a time when industrialization was beginning to make its mark
on the landscape in the form of growing cities and smoking factory chimneys, Britains few
areas of wilderness took on an almost religious significance. For most Modernist writers, it
was the city that captured the imagination, for it was here that the modern world experienced
most intensely. The Modernist poet no longer sought the solitude of the hills for his
inspiration, preferring the bustle and notice of the street, the caf and the metro. Anyway, the
First World War had demonstrated how pastoral idyll could be transformed in the matter of
hours into a landscape of complete destruction.

You dont know what youve got till its gone, a true saying that reflects a gradual
disappearance of the nature from literature, which makes me very nostalgic.
Nature has been providing us a good support for imitation, because man has tried to
recreate what he sees. Aristotle says that, since imitation is given to us by nature, men having
been naturally endowed with these gifts from the beginning and then developing them
gradually, for the most part finally created the art of poetry from their early improvisations.
Poetry then diverged in the directions of the natural dispositions of poets. Nature, in its ever
shifting meanings, does seem to have on consistent idea contributed to it, despite the
technicalities. It can refer to the literal, organic substances that make up the vegetation,
animals, and mankind in the world around us. It can also mean the behaviors exhibited by
said organic beings, such as the hibernation of bears. It has also been used to describe the
emotions and other commonalities experienced by humans as a whole.
Nature meant many things to the Romantics. It was often presented as a work of art,
constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. While particular perspectives
with regard to nature varied considerably nature as a healing power, nature as a source of
subject and image, nature and refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including
artificial language the prevailing views accorded nature the status of and organically unified
whole. It was viewed as organic, rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a
system of mechanical laws, for Romanticism displaces the rationalist view of the universe as
a machine (like the deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an organic image, a
living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics gave greater attention both to
describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing sensuous nuance and this is as
true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic nature poetry. Accuracy of observation,
however, was not sought of its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is essentially a poetry of
meditation.
In my opinion, nature has always taken the central spot in this universe of the
literature and has continuously been inspiring people to write from the soul.

Prof. Silviu-Mihai Srghi