| Title | : | The Song of the Earth |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0674008189 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780674008182 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 360 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2000 |
In the first ecological reading of English literature, Jonathan Bate traces the distinctions among "nature," "culture," and "environment" and shows how their meanings have changed since their appearance in the literature of the eighteenth century. An intricate interweaving of climatic, topographical, and political elements poetically deployed, his book ranges from greenhouses in Jane Austen's novels to fruit bats in the poetry of Les Murray, by way of Thomas Hardy's woodlands, Dr. Frankenstein's Creature, John Clare's birds' nests, Wordsworth's rivers, Byron's bear, and an early nineteenth-century novel about an orangutan who stands for Parliament. Though grounded in the English Romantic tradition, the book also explores American, Central European, and Caribbean poets and engages theoretically with Rousseau, Adorno, Bachelard, and especially Heidegger.
The model for an innovative and sophisticated new "ecopoetics," The Song of the Earth is at once an essential history of environmental consciousness and an impassioned argument for the necessity of literature in a time of ecological crisis.
The Song of the Earth Reviews
-
I love to read. Who would have thought it? After posting a review (or an update) on here every day practically for the last two years I think I’ve clearly established that. But I’m going to say it again anyway: I love to read.
Why?
Books are escapism; they are a doorway into another world and a glimpse into the past. Reading is highly entertaining and enjoyable, but it also teaches you so much about the world. It depends on what you read, of course, but I love to read everything. From fiction to poetry, from non-fiction to criticism and from drama to children’s literature, I consume it all no matter what age or artistic movement it comes from. I will spend my life reading. I will spend my life trying to learn as much as possible about the world and her history through books. It’s the student in me. It’s the academic in me. I will never stop reading.
My point is that this book and this field of study (ecocriticism) are highly important in today’s world; it seeks to understand and analyse the relationship between literature and the environment: it seeks to find the representations and suggestions of how we can be more ecologically sustainable towards the environment that are presented in literature. And this is what my dissertation was about in the early works of Percy Shelley. This field of study is highly compelling and highly important simply because the world is pushing towards environmental collapse. Historical representations and arguments of how we can change this, how we can improve upon our current systems, are of vital importance if we want to achieve any change: they can help us adapt. Simply put, green movements are nothing new, though previously individuals and societies never had such a name for themselves.
Professor Jonathan Bate addresses many authors and many different strands of thought within this area. Different writers had very different notions on how the environment should be treated and maintained. Chapters cover ideas about the state of nature, pastoral, weather, animals and the purpose of poetry itself within this world. What does it do? What is it for? The romantics used it for political reasons, and to argue that nature should be preserved so they could be part of it. Bate pays particular attention to John Clare and Wordsworth, but ignores the most natural of nature poets: Percy Shelley. As do most poetry series when they present writers dubbed as “nature poets.”
So this is a highly important book within the field, a field that, as it stands, is rather sparse in its content when compared to other theoretical approaches to literature. For example, compare the amount of works on this topic to those on postcolonial theory and feminism and you’ll see what I mean. This is, however, a relatively new field in comparison, one that has so much more it needs to address. I really do love learning about it, and this book was a great place to start. -
Goodreads, I accept your techos, but leave me to my dwelling.
-
This is it: the official Ecocriticism book.
"If mortals dwell in that they save the Earth and if poetry is the original admission of dwelling, then poetry is the place where we save the earth".
If we build our identity through ideas of unity, our identities become unified, and we make a unified world. Brilliant. -
Couldn't have written my dissertation without it.
-
The Song of the Earth is a seminal early text in the Ecocriticism field.
-
Beautiful. A thrilling insight almost on every page.
-
I have such mixed feelings about this book. It's broad ranging, fascinating and important because how we think and write about the land informs how we treat our planet. For anyone interested in literature, its a fascinating re-framing of historical writing, but for anyone who isn't a literary academic (me) there are sections that are really hard work.
I found parts of it glorious, inspiring, and highly informative. Some parts I was bogged down in. There was a lot I didn't agree with - most critically the idea that language itself is an act of distancing from nature. For anyone who believes that we are not the only communicative creatures, the idea that language is artifice and takes us away from the real thing, is problematic. I'm more of Robert McFarlane's school of thought - that in having words for ideas, for physical things, for place, we are more able and more likely to engage.
By this point you should have a keen sense that you need to read this book, or that it really isn't for you. It certainly isn't for everyone, those who are fascinated with language will want to read it regardless of whether they entirely agree. Those interested in landscape and eco poetry probably want to read it too, and if you're doing relevant literary studies, it's going to be a must. If these are not your subjects, I wouldn't recommend starting here. -
Having helped begin ecocriticism in the UK with his Romantic Ecology in 1991, Bate here focuses on “why poetry continues to matter,” presenting a variety of poems that promote imaginative reconnection with the earth. Throughout, he explores the paradox that poetry is part of “culture,” that trees are destroyed to make paper on which to print poems about living trees, but believes the acts of reading, thinking about, and interpreting poetry can bring an awareness of natural balance. He warns that he’s not talking about ecopolitics, that too often political applications of ecology lead to destructive emphasis on nationhood and property rights (Heidegger’s links to Nazi ideology provide a frightening example). Often, Bate’s own close readings of poems model what he wants readers to do: for example, his discussion of Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” shows how the word “connect” emphasizes the balance of an ecosystem. That makes this readable book both an argument for and a model of ecological literary criticism.
-
Bate's research is extensive and his interpretations on Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Clare, and Ricoeur, Hegel, Adorno, and Benjamin are just as valuable. This was a particularly timely book for me to read now because of how Bate synthesizes poetry and the arts with ecology: ecopoetics.
If anyone is searching for a new critical synthesis that balances ecology and the environment with literature, I recommend this book. -
Eco-critism and eco-poetics! I'm a fan!
-
dnf, not as useful for my research as I hoped. I got about halfway through.
