III, Issue 2, 219-234, September 2010 In the 1864 the Government of India established the Indian Forest Service.1 The IFS, and the various provincial forestry branches it directed, managed the vast government forests of India and acted as a guide and model for the broader empire forestry movement, one of the precursors to modern environmentalism.2 The IFS and its policies have been the focus of a great deal of scholarship. Britain and the World Edinburgh University Press īritish Scholar Vol. We would like to thank the Social Science Research Council and the American Council In 2011 Brett will take up a position as a lecturer in modern history in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney. Bennett is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Barton is a permanent research fellow in environmental history in the Research School of Social Sciences and the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University. Scholars of the subaltern school first viewed scientific foresters and their work as a force that encouraged the alienation of Indian society from nature, rupturing a precolonial ecological balance.3 From this perspective, the scientific forestry policies Gregory A. The first four lines of Byron's verse are beautiful because they are so evocative the last five lines are beautiful because they are so full of wisdom and insight.‘There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’: The Culture of Forestry in British India ‘There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’: The Culture of Forestry in British Indiaīritish Scholar Vol. It is beautifully evocative and romantic, but it is also somewhat untruthful for it is impossible for us to be rolled sound in Earth's diurnal course in the same way that, for instance, a wild animal is. Wordsworth, in a short poem which begins "A slumber did my spirit seal" wrote about his soul being "rolled sound in Earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees". Yet this striving to conceal has presumably led to the disjunct with Nature, which means we can only hold "interviews" with our true selves, that we must attempt to "steal" wisdom and insight which ought to be ours by right, and that we cannot express what we truly are. He states that modern humans have tried (with only partial success) to "conceal" their essence and origins. But he is also unsure of the how and the wherefore of his Nature being, using the words "may be". Byron is asserting the belief that our origins and essence lie in Nature, that we are from Nature, that perhaps we ought to be one with Nature, and that therefore this mingling with the Universe is a pleasurable, wonderful thing. What Byron is saying is that although there is a pleasure in the pathless woods etc., although we are drawn to Nature because Nature is "all I may be, or have been before", there is also a clear disjunct between modern humans and Nature. Yet we wouldn't be surprised if John Donne came up with such a remark, so it certainly isn't because it is "too modern". I think people are only complaining that it doesn't sound right or sounds too modern because it de-romanticises the opening lines. I think use of the word interview is brilliant and demonstrates the greatness of the poet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |