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Tolbert, Aaron Rich

English

2010

MA

This project aims to explore concrete understandings of the natural environment, as discussed in poetics. It starts with a comprehensive review of modem discussions in literary criticism of our human relations to the environment. It quickly moves to look at how ecocriticism has formerly engaged discussions of the environment within poetry in general, and then situates these ideas within a broader history of British Romantic Poetry. My task is to look at how British Romantic poets use language to support a theory that the natural world has agency, and that that agency acts in formative ways upon them as poets. The questions that surround a possible agency in nature range from philosophical questions of "subjects" and "objects," theories of art, and psychological implications, to historical/cultural movements and politics. No easily discemable range of questions could be asked upon what is at stake in affirming of disavowing natural agency.
However, having discussed others' attempts to traverse this series of challenges, this project turns to face how William Wordsworth uses language in specific and unique ways to argue for an agency in nature that works upon him in a mode I call "natural impression." To elucidate this natural impression I argue that the use of a new rhetorical figure, in the form of a specific metaphor I call "naturamorphism," allows me as a critic the ability to read Wordsworth's poetry in a new ways, all under the umbrella of ecocriticism. Finally, I suggest readings of other Romantic poetry and then stretch out to discuss how this new possible rhetorical figure, tied to theories of natural agency, offers vitality to other critical debates, specifically post-colonial discussions of poetry.