The Poet as Botanist
Published on 3. March 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
282 pages
978-0-521-18872-2 (ISBN)
Description
For centuries, poets have been ensnared - as one of their number, Andrew Marvell put it - by the beauty of flowers. Then, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward, that enjoyment was enriched by a surge of popular interest in botany. Besides exploring the relationship between poetic and scientific responses to the green world within the context of humanity's changing concepts of its own place in the ecosphere, Molly Mahood considers the part that flowering plants played in the daily lives and therefore in the literary work of a number of writers who could all be called poet-botanists: Erasmus Darwin, George Crabbe, John Clare, John Ruskin and D. H. Lawrence. A concluding chapter looks closely at the meanings, old or new, that plants retained or obtained in the violent twentieth century.
Reviews / Votes
Review of the hardback: 'Mahood's grasp of the history of botany and botany as a whole is admirable; few professional botanists, working as they do in ever more specialised fields, could match her overview of their subject. ... Mahood leads, almost forces, us to look at both botany and poetry with fresh eyes, and notice details which we have failed to examine or study for many years.' Roy Vickery, John Clare Society Journal Review of the hardback: 'Mahood concludes ... with a thoughtful explanation of the way in which nature poetry was discredited during the twentieth century.' Ellen J. Jenkins 'Mahood's writing is both inviting and engaging, and the chapters on Erasmus Darwin, Crabbe and Clare make particularly important contributions to the growing body of scholarship on these hitherto underexplored poets.' Annotated Bibliography of English StudiesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
462 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-18872-2 (9780521188722)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
M. M. Mahood
The Poet as Botanist
E-Book
06/2008
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€38.49
Available for download
M. M. Mahood
The Poet as Botanist
Book
06/2008
Cambridge University Press
€129.20
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Content
Introduction; 1. Primroses at Dove Cottage and Down House; 2. Erasmus Darwin's feeling for the organism; 3. Crabbe's Slimy Mallows and Suffocated Clover; 4. John Clare: bard of the wild flowers; 5. Ruskin's flowers of evil; 6. D. H. Lawrence, botanist; 7. Poetry and photosynthesis.