ABSTRACT
Ask any sophomore English major: having read Wordsworth at an early age, Emerson and Thoreau believed in “Nature.” So too, on the account of her first editors, did little Emily Dickinson: one entire section (of four) dedicated to that pat Romantic topos. The problem is, in all these famous cases, the stance is not always worshipful. They all know the educational value of “One impulse from a vernal wood,” but they also know things taught otherwise, as by “all the sages.” Nor is their will to admire proof against the in-creep of irony. The same essay even suggests that it may be a little late in the day to run on about the restorative and instructive value of Nature. “One can hardly speak of it without excess.” Indeed, “a dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of the fields is no better than his brother of Broadway”.
