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Article: Ecocriticism and the long eighteenth century.(Special Focus Section: New Approaches to the 18th Century)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- College Literature
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 West Chester University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I.
Few subjects garnered more attention from eighteenth-century pundits than the role of nature in literary works. Participants in the discourse of criticism and aesthetics during Britain's Hanover regime not only had to know an iamb from a trochee, but also the georgic from the pastoral, the sublime from the picturesque, natura naturans from natura naturata, and the general idea of the tulip from the streak of the tulip. Of course, debates about art's relationship to nature date back to antiquity, but in the long eighteenth century--an age that ushered in empiricism, natural theology, and natural history--the subject assumed an increased urgency. Current ...