1st Edition
The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature
By Victoria Bladen
Copyright 2022
246 Pages
20 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
246 Pages
20 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
246 Pages
20 B/W Illustrations
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature explores the vital motif of the tree of life and what it meant to early modern writers who drew from its long histories in biblical, classical and folkloric contexts, giving rise to a language of trees, an arboreal aesthetics. An ancient symbol of immortality, the tree of life was appropriated by Christian ideology and... Read more
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
- Arboreal Aesthetics: the Language of Trees
- The Garden of the soul: George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and the tree of life
- Political gardens: Shakespeare and the tree of life
- The Tree of Life in the Country Estate: Aemilia Lanyer
- Andrew Marvell and the forest of the mind
- The Sacred Orchard: Ralph Austen and the tree of life
- Conclusions
Biography
Victoria Bladen teaches in literary studies and adaptation at The University of Queensland, Australia and has twice received a Faculty Teaching Award. Her publications include six Shakespearean text guides in the Insight (Melbourne) series, including The Merchant of Venice (2020) and Much Ado About Nothing (2019), and five co-edited volumes, including Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear (2019), Shakespeare and the Supernatural (2020), and a special issue of Australian Literary Studies on Afterlives of Pastoral (2015).
"In this exciting new work, [Bladen] establishes further perceptions, making the concept of ‘arboreal aesthetics’ her basis for a fresh approach to deeper cultural understandings. Drawing attention to the phenomenon of the tree of life motif in both religious and secular understanding of the natural world, she examines diverse poetic forms, finding that aesthetic considerations embrace changing political realities through the seventeenth century. Victoria Bladen has provided us with an elegant and important contribution to the Routledge series ‘World Literature and the Environment’."-- Christopher Wortham, The University of Western Australia, Parergon 39.2 (2022)
