Brewer and Flagg’s Insect Choirs: Psalmic and Wordsworthian Ecology

Jan Marten Ivo Klaver (Università degli Studi di Urbino)

Abstract

La seconda metà del diciannovesimo secolo vide due diverse spiegazioni, in parte antagoniste e in parte sovrapposte, degli intricati rapporti tra organismi e ambiente. Partendo dalla teologia naturale di William Paley e dal concetto di ecologia di Ernst Haeckel, e dal confluire di questi due filoni nell’approccio ecologico di Papa Francesco che ha le sue basi sia nella teleologia che nell’idea di natura di Wordsworth, questo saggio analizza come due popolari scrittori naturalisti, Cobham Brewer in Inghilterra e Wilson Flagg in America, esprimono la loro fascinazione per la ‘musica’ prodotta dai cori di insetti attraverso le loro rispettive idee religiose ed ecologiche.

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-176

Parole chiave: Cobham Brewer, Wilson Flagg, insetti, suono, natura, Wordsworth.

Bibliografia

Barton, William Gardner. 1885. Thoreau, Flagg, and Burroughs. Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 22, 1: 54-80.

Bate, Jonathan. 2000. The Song of the Earth. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. 1854. Sound and Its Phenomena. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans.

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. 1858 [1838] 12th edition. A Guide to the Knowledge of Things Familiar. London: Jarrold & Sons.

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. 1860. Theology in Science; Containing the Following Subjects: Geology, Physical Geography, Ethnology, Philology, The Plurality of Worlds, the Atmosphere, Water, Light, Heat, Sound, &c. And Shewing The Wisdom And Goodness Of God, For the Use of Schools and of Private Readers. London: Jarrold & Sons.

Brown, William P. 2010. The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Buckley, Michael J. 2010. Toward an Elevating Picturesque: Wilson Flagg and the Popularization of the Nature Essay. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 17, 3: 526-540.

Budgen, Louise M. [Acheta Domestica]. 1851. Episodes of Insect Life. Second Series. London: Reeve & Bentham.

Clark, Timothy. 2011. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eddy, Pearl Faulkner. 1931. Insects in English Poetry. The Scientific Monthly, 33, 1: 53-73. Fish, Henry. 1840. Natural Theology: In a Lecture Delivered in Lodge Street Chapel, to the Bristol Young Men’s Society […] Containing an Exposure of the Errors of Socialism. Bristol: N. Lomas. Flagg’s Field and Forest. 1857. North American Review, 84: 267-268.

Flagg, Wilson. 1845. On Theories of Poetry. The World We Live In: A Repository of the Useful and Entertaining, 2, 1: 3.

Flagg, Wilson. 1857. Studies in The Field and Forest. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

Flagg, Wilson. 1881a. A Year among the Trees; or, The Woods and By-Ways of New England. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

Flagg, Wilson. 1881b. A Year with the Birds. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

Haeckel, Ernst. 1883 [1879]. The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny (2 vols). London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.

Haeckel, Ernst. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (2 vols). Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Lightman, Bernard. 2007. Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for a New Audience. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Morton, Timothy.   2007.   Ecology   without   Nature:   Rethinking Environmental   Aesthetics. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Paley, William. 2008 [1802]. Natural Theology; or, Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pope Francis. 2015. Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home. Vatican: Vatican Press.

Sandler, Ronald L. 2018. Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stauffer, Robert C. 1957. Haeckel, Darwin and Ecology. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 32, 2: 138-144.

Thomson, James. 1972. The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

V. L. K. 1910. Haeckel’s Evolution of Man. Science, 32: 827: 629.

Walls, Laura Dassow. 2017. Natural History in the Anthropocene. Parham & Louise Westling eds. A Global History of Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 187-200.

White, Lynn. 1967. The Historical Rots of Our Ecologic Crisis. Science, 155, 3767: 1203-1207. Wilson Flagg. The Naturalist and Writer. 1884 (May, 13). Cornell Daily Sun: 3-4.

Worster, Donald. 1994 (2nd ed.). Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Views: 946

Download PDF

Downloads: 1501