earticle

영어

Since ancient times, nature as an object of projection has involved various interpretations and assumptions which have enabled nature to be endowed with diverse symbols and then to have a personal, social, and even theological correspondence with humans. This correspondence, in turn, has made people create various kinds of philosophy, literature, and tradition. The relation of literature to nature, therefore, has not consisted in the merely literary description of nature but in expressing changes in ideas, a criterion of value judgement, and national experience. This relation, therefore, is an essential means to understanding and criticism of society and politics. This aspect is, especially, important for understanding America and its people, who established and modified their identity within a comparatively brief historical period. In the early history of America, Puritanism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and Romanticism all made contributions in their own way to the formation of American culture and identity. In the progress of this formation, nature was an essential way of expressing the experiences of each period. This paper, therefore, aimed to describe a change of American views of nature and the correlation between this change and that of social and cultural attitudes through American poets of the early colonial periods to the late nineteenth century.