Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

One of the defining characteristics of the Romantic movement in Europe is its enduring engagement with the natural world. Throughout the Romantic period, imagery and ideas drawn from nature are omnipresent in the work of poets and novelists, painters and musicians, philosophers and political theorists. For many European Romantic writers, the natural world is more than just a backdrop or setting for human activity. Rather, the representation of nature and the exploration of the human relationship to nature permeates all aspects of literary art from genre and form to plot and character. The relationship of literature and nature is explored not only in works that are explicitly about nature (such as Chateaubriand's Travels in America or Eichendorff's “Moonlit Night”); nature is also present in different manners and with differing effects throughout the course of European Romanticism. It appears as the antagonist in Vigny's “The Death of the Wolf” and Goethe's “Elf-King.” It provides the metaphors for articulating complex philosophical and theological concepts, as in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality or Coleridge's “The Eolian Harp.” It is the vehicle for human self-understanding and for the articulation of the most profound emotions of love and grief, as can be seen in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther or Lamartine's “The Lake.” Moreover, examining nature in literature ... log in or subscribe to read full text