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15 results in The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature

  • Introduction

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 1-32

  • Summary

    The conceptual foundations of ecology were laid in the seventeenth century by the natural philosopher Kenelm Digby, when he developed the idea of “the oeconomy of nature.” Digby transformed the practical agrarian discourse of “natural oeconomy” (household management), which links humans to their environments, into the natural-philosophical concept of the oeconomy of nature. Using the oeconomic values of thrift , regularity, and the ancient dispensation to conceptualize natural processes, Digby projected a human institution, with all its ideological baggage, onto the natural world. But, for Digby, closely observing nonhuman creatures in the framework of oeconomy opened up the more radical possibility of a decentered system, in which each creature is a potential householder, each the center of its own oeconomy of nature

  • Chapter 4 - Divine Husbandry

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 103-128

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 traces the influence of theological oikonomia – God’s providential governance of the world – on Herbert’s two major works: The Temple (1633) and The Country Parson (1652). For Herbert, human agency is a problem because it enables us to deviate from divine rule. As an alternative to the vicissitudes of human life, Herbert posits nonhuman creatures, particularly plants, as the ideal recipients of divine governance. In “Providence,” “Affliction (I),” and “Employment (II),” God is the agent of arboreal care. When Herbert characterizes his poetry as “my first fruits” in “The Dedication” – the opening poem in The Temple – he positions himself as a tree, passively producing fruit for God. The oeconomy of production thus comes full circle as the fruits return to God, their ultimate source. The poet, a tree in the service of God, is subsumed within the oeconomy of divine providence.

  • Chapter 3 - The School of Beasts

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 82-102
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  • Summary

    Chapter 3 continues to explore the country house poem by studying Marvell’s late addition to the genre, “Upon Appleton House,” in tandem with Swiss reformer Pierre Viret’s dialogue The Schoole of Beastes; Intituled, the Good Householder, or the Oeconomickes, translated into English in 1585. By incorporating the behavior of animals into the popular genre of the householder’s manual, Viret criticizes human pretensions of earthly dominion. Like Viret, who beseeches his readers to look askance at nonhuman creatures, Andrew Marvell uses disorienting poetics to encourage readers to reconsider their assumptions about humanity’s position in the world. I am not arguing for a direct line of filiation between Viret and Marvell, but rather noting structural similarities in how they articulate the relationship between human and animal dwellings. Just as Viret inverts the husbandry manual, centering his on bestial rather than human dwellings, Marvell reconfigures the seventeenth-century country house poem along nonanthropocentric lines. Oeconomy is for both Viret and Marvell a natural principle rather than a human invention.

  • Chapter 1 - The Oeconomy of Nature in Seventeenth-Century England

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 33-59

  • Summary

    Chapter 1 focuses on the oeconomy of nature’s development in the work of Digby’s friends and contemporaries Samuel Gott, Robert Boyle, Walter Charleton, Samuel Collins. The oeconomy of nature enables these writers to explore the relationship between nature and human politics, the divine structure of the universe, the microcosmic unity of the human body, and the relationship between humans and nonhuman creatures. The final section of the chapter focuses on how Margaret Cavendish incorporates natural oeconomy into her poetry in order to criticize the anthropocentric natural philosophy of Digby and other members of the Royal Society.

  • Epilogue

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 154-165

  • Summary

    The epilogue, “From Oeconomy to Ecology,” traces the development of the oeconomy of nature in the works of Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Tensions already present in the oeconomy the nature of Digby and Boyle intensify in the work of Linnaeus and Darwin. Darwin develops his secular and decentered version of “the economy of nature” by removing the concept’s anthropocentric and theocentric anchors, producing a radically decentered version of nature based on universal struggle and competition. Finally, in the work of Thoreau and Emerson I trace an alternative path of development for the oeconomy of nature based on the intensification of the concept’s theological associations. For Thoreau, natural oeconomy became an alternative to the stultifying effects of political economy. Emerson, likewise, draws upon the work of George Herbert in order to rediscover the spiritual dimensions of natural oeconomy. While Darwin uses the economy of nature to forge to the modern science of ecology, Herbert’s spiritual oeconomy would develop into deep ecology of modern environmentalism.

  • Chapter 2 - Penshurst’s Parasites

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 60-81

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 turns to the works of Ben Jonson, focusing primarily on how “To Penshurst” (ca. 1616) localizes pastoral and georgic literature in an actual rural estate. Digby was Jonson’s patron and eventual literary executor and was likely influenced by Jonson’s poetic representations of nature. Jonson depicts oeconomy as nature’s organizing principle through the depiction of a functioning rural estate. Penshurst is characterized by sustainable resource yields achieved through a careful balance of production and consumption and by the predictable actions of its denizens, who willingly sacrifice themselves to the estate’s productive cycles. However, rather than depict himself as part of this system, Jonson inserts himself into the poem as a gluttonous parasite, disruptive of the very balance that the poem takes pains to achieve. I argue that this disruption enables Jonson to exert his autonomy from both oppressively predictable natural systems and the analogous networks of patronage that facilitate the poem’s creation.

  • Chapter 5 - Labors of Luxury

  • Peter Remien, Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho
  • Book:
    The Concept of Nature in Early Modern English Literature
    Published online:
    28 January 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2019, pp 129-153

  • Summary

    Chapter 5 turns to the works of Thomas Burnet and John Milton for an alternative model of the oeconomy of nature in which humanity plays an integral role. Burnet’s oeconomy of nature involves a two-part “System of Natural Providence” based on “how God hath order’d Nature, and how the Oeconomy of the Intellectual World is adapted to it.” Human oeconomy, in Burnet’s system, is adjusted to but also capable of altering an ever-shifting natural environment. For Burnet, the oeconomy of nature relies on the confluence of human and natural systems. Milton presents a similar vision of the world in which divine prerogative and human labor come together to produce nature’s overarching order. In Paradise Lost, Milton represents human labor as a balance against Edenic fecundity, without which nature’s productive capacity would go to waste. For Burnet and Milton, unlike for Digby and Herbert, humanity is fully integrated into the oeconomy of nature, both subsumed within its systems, and at the same time responsible for shaping the world. The cosmological narratives of Milton and Burnet bridge the gap between natural oeconomy and the oeconomy of nature introduced by Digby.