Date of Award

Spring 1954

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

Abstract

The general topic of the treatment of Nature in poetry has be­come somewhat shopworn . Miss Reynolds' excellent coverage of that transitional period from Pope to Wordsworth has crossed the lending library desk into the hands of students and interested readers many times. Her effort is one of the first to reveal in a scholarly fashion a love or Nature and the manners of its expression.

Myra Reynolds considers all aspects of Nature. She seems to leave no stone of intonation unturned. In stating the paramount characteristics of the treatment of Nature as handled by the classical poets, she notes the following: a general dislike or dis­ regard of the majestic such as the seasons, sea, mountains, and storms; a like attitude toward the mysterious or the remote; a close association with the pleasant and serviceable parts of Nature such as rural tanning and good weather; a pleasure in ordered Nature; generalized description; and "an underlying conception of Nature as entirely apart from man, and to be reckoned with merely as his servant or his toe." In the second part of her triple approach she gives a discussion of poets who diverge tram the classical view. The turning away from the rigidity of the classical and the turning to a love of Nature is the theme which interests Miss Reynolds. She emphasizes the majesty of Nature. She discusses gardening and landscape painting, but only spasmodically considers animals in the chain of being. The third part deals with fiction, books of travel, and landscape gardening.

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