Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle displayed a new manner of writing that differed with what other writers of the time period were focusing on. Vivid descriptions of the landscape around him filled the pages of this book, a style of writing that conflicted with the romanticism found across the world. Later authors would take inspiration from Darwin’s work and apply it to their own writings. One such writer was Elizabeth Bishop, whose poem “The Fish” echoes the manner of writing Darwin put forth in The Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin’s empirical method of writing found in The Voyage of the Beagle inspires contemporary and modern writers, such as Bishop, to challenge romantic styles of writing by encouraging the employment of an ecocentric
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Individuals were venturing out into the wilderness to see the power and might of God. William Cronon states that the sublime aspect of the wilderness attracted romantic writers to these remote areas: “Although God might, of course, choose to show Himself anywhere, He would most often be found in those vast, powerful landscapes where one could not help feeling insignificant and being reminded of one’s own mortality” (Cronon 72). The opportunity to make a spiritual connection with God led to a collective love of the wilderness among romantics, but this connection with the environment stems from a need that is generally human centric. The language used to describe these scenes constricts the audience of these romantic works to see nature through a lens that is typically anthropocentric, complicating the relationship between humans and nature. Humans, through this method of writing, appear to use nature for their own benefit, rather than to simply cherish the workings of the environment and the landscapes around them. This concept is present in William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” wherein Wordsworth regard nature as "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being" (Wordsworth 108-111). There is an …show more content…
This method of composition does not seek any personal benefits from nature, but instead sets out to accurately paint the nature scenes with little input from the personal thoughts of the writers, which provides a new lens for viewing and studying the environment. By observing the environment through an ecocentric lens, the natural world does not fall victim to the boundaries set by human language. An anthropocentric view of the scene laid out in the poem “The Fish” would have rendered the fish a minor character rather than the main figure, but through this attention on the natural world rather than on the individual witnessing the scene, the fish becomes more than an animal that has suffered, it becomes a warrior with remnants of its fight littered throughout its body “like medals with their ribbons/ frayed and wavering, / a five-haired beard of wisdom” (Bishop 61-63). The fish is not constricted to the thoughts and reflections of the speaker of the poem, making it its own entity, not a being dependent on humans. An ecocentric approach to nature writing allows individuals to define the the same objects in new terms, allowing a different exploration of the
Individuals were venturing out into the wilderness to see the power and might of God. William Cronon states that the sublime aspect of the wilderness attracted romantic writers to these remote areas: “Although God might, of course, choose to show Himself anywhere, He would most often be found in those vast, powerful landscapes where one could not help feeling insignificant and being reminded of one’s own mortality” (Cronon 72). The opportunity to make a spiritual connection with God led to a collective love of the wilderness among romantics, but this connection with the environment stems from a need that is generally human centric. The language used to describe these scenes constricts the audience of these romantic works to see nature through a lens that is typically anthropocentric, complicating the relationship between humans and nature. Humans, through this method of writing, appear to use nature for their own benefit, rather than to simply cherish the workings of the environment and the landscapes around them. This concept is present in William Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” wherein Wordsworth regard nature as "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being" (Wordsworth 108-111). There is an …show more content…
This method of composition does not seek any personal benefits from nature, but instead sets out to accurately paint the nature scenes with little input from the personal thoughts of the writers, which provides a new lens for viewing and studying the environment. By observing the environment through an ecocentric lens, the natural world does not fall victim to the boundaries set by human language. An anthropocentric view of the scene laid out in the poem “The Fish” would have rendered the fish a minor character rather than the main figure, but through this attention on the natural world rather than on the individual witnessing the scene, the fish becomes more than an animal that has suffered, it becomes a warrior with remnants of its fight littered throughout its body “like medals with their ribbons/ frayed and wavering, / a five-haired beard of wisdom” (Bishop 61-63). The fish is not constricted to the thoughts and reflections of the speaker of the poem, making it its own entity, not a being dependent on humans. An ecocentric approach to nature writing allows individuals to define the the same objects in new terms, allowing a different exploration of the