New Literary History

N=”JUSTIFY”> In this paper I wish to suggest the origins of British literary ecocriticism, and I give three examples of how such criticism contributes to the interpretation of twentieth-century poems. Contemporary theorists of ecological literary studies do not always seem aware of the historical literary tradition that is available to them. That tradition begins in the late eighteenth century.

In 1777, twelve years before Gilbert White published his Natural History of Selborne, John Aikin had argued, in An Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry, that the new knowledge emerging from the study of natural history could serve descriptive poets admirably in achieving novelty in imagery and language. But, noted Aikin, “every part of natural history does not seem equally capable of affording poetic imagery.” ¹ The reason for this was to be found in a connection between man and “the animal race” that Aikin referred to as “a sort of companionship and mutual attachment” lacking in, for all their other values to human beings, “the vegetable creation” and “the mineral kingdom”: “The animal race, in common with their human lord and head, have, almost universally, somewhat of moral and intellectual character; whose motions, habitations, and pursuits, are so infinitely and curiously varied; and whose connection with man arises to a sort of companionship and mutual attachment; seem on those accounts peculiarly adapted to the purpose of poetry” (34). Indeed, of all animals, birds seemed to him central:

Were I to propose a subject for descriptive poetry, which at the same time that it afforded uncommon scope for grand and original painting in natural history, also offered copious matter for philosophical and moral reflexion, connected by strict unity of design, I should mention, in preference to any other that occurs to me, that of the migration of birds. The knowledge, indeed, requisite for treating this subject in a masterly manner, would be superior to that of the professed naturalist; since this branch of his researches is yet in its infancy.

(131–32; italics in original)

[End Page 625] Aikin took for granted that advances in our understanding of birds would lead to fresh conventions and the abandonment of stale or incorrect allusions in descriptive poetry, a poetry he recognized as a new genre. And while he did not share our assumption that man and nature are interrelated, he did recognize the special emotional and intellectual relationship we have with animals. Aikin’s remedy for the ills of descriptive poetry did not save it from being transformed into poetry of another kind, but it did serve to challenge poets.

Of the poets who took up his challenge, one—Charlotte Turner Smith—is noteworthy for my purposes here. Smith accepted Aikin’s choice of subject, while she redirected his vision. Her procedure can perhaps serve to encourage our contemporary poets and nature writers to enhance the ecological possibilities available to them.

Charlotte Smith’s “Ode to the missel thrush” first appeared in her two-volume Conversations Introducing Poetry, Chiefly on Subjects of Natural History for the Use of Children and Young Persons (1804). ² Conversations belongs to the large body of turn-of-the-century writing loosely referred to as “conduct books” aimed at what Maria Edgeworth called “practical education.” The strategies of practical education for children were, at their best, founded on a reality based both on scientific and psychological grounds. Smith’s Conversations might be seen as a very shrewd reply to Thomas Percival’s A Father’s Instructions (1775), in which the father interpolates poetry composed by others into his moral tales and reflections to (as his lengthy title states) “promote the love of virtue, a taste for knowledge, and an early acquaintance with the works of nature.” ³ Percival’s aim was informed by his assumption that attentive observation of the works of nature developed a taste for knowledge which in turn enhanced aesthetic taste and cultivated virtue. ⁴ He addressed the interrelation in his essay, “Miscellaneous Observations on the Alliance of Natural History, and Philosophy, with Poetry” (1784). ⁵ Smith’s narrator and model parent, Mrs. Talbot, addresses “children and young persons,” whereas Percival’s...