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Ranging widely across scholarly disciplines, Back to Nature illuminates the response of seventeenth-century culture, especially English literature, to the way urbanization, capitalism, Protestantism, colonialism, Skepticism, empiricism, and new technologies conspired to alienate people from both the earth and reality itself. Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Part I: Introduction: The Green and the Real -- 1 Ecology, Epistemology, and Empiricism -- 2 Theology, Semiotics, and Literature -- Part II: Paradoxes: Alienation from Nature in English Literature -- 3 As You Liken It: Simile in the Forest -- 4 Shades of Green: Marvell's Garden and the Mowers -- Part III: Reformations: Protestant Politics, Poetics, and Paintings -- 5 Metaphysical and Cavalier Styles of Consciousness -- 6 The Retreat of God, the Passions of Nature, and the Objects of Dutch Painting -- 7 Nature in Two Dimensions: Perspective and Presence in Ryckaert, Vermeer, and Others -- Part IV: Solutions: The Consolations of Mediation -- 8 Metal and Flesh in The Merchant of Venice: Shining Substitutes and Approximate Values -- 9 Thomas Traherne: The World as Present -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments.
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