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'Nature as Conscience and Consciousness: The Pastoral Hero and the Sympathetic Imagination'

Presented by Belmont University

September 15, 2009

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Belmont University faculty member, Dr. Annette Sisson, Department of English will examine questions such as: Why is Wendell Berry's eponymous character Jayber Crow reading Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders, which he pronounces to be "a good book?" And why does Hardy insist that the hedonistic, sentimental Edred Fitzpiers, in his novel The Woodlanders, doesn't have the depth of character to grasp the ideas of P. B. Shelley, of whom he fancies himself a disciple? The history of the British pastoral tradition is long and deeply indebted to classical literature, but the use of Nature as an occasion to reflect on "the mind of Man" and as a catalyst for the development of the "sympathetic imagination," as William Wordsworth evinced, gives it new life and social relevance. The pastoral hero's efforts to resist the encroachments of modern life and its dehumanizing effects distinguished nineteenth century British Romanticism and influenced not only the Victorians and American transcendentalists who followed them, but even the Modernists and, more recently, contemporary Agrarian writers, such as Wendell Berry, who return and celebrate them and, yes, recycle them in new ways for the 21st century.

This event is part of Belmont University's Eighth Annual Humanities Symposium, which this year is centered on the concept Nature and the Human Spirit. Be sure to check out the long program schedule and short program schedule.