Civilization's essence lies in its distinction from Nature. Both physically and symbolically, city walls separate the world of citizens, societies, and cultures from the uncultivated land, the wild beasts, and the illiterate savages that lie without. But how solid are these walls? And how real or even desirable are the distinctions they seek to make? We may prefer the civilized to the wild, but do we not also, paradoxically, prefer the natural to the artificial? Is nature to be dominated, or revered? Is it our nemesis or our mother? We start with the Bible and Homer, continue through Middle Ages with Alain of Lille, Dante, and Boccaccio, dip into the French tradition with Rousseau and Chateaubriand, and continue through the Italian 19th and 20th centuries with Leopardi, Verga, Montale, Calvino, and Roberto Saviano, to name a few. The goal: to trace the history of nature from the beginning of civilization to the present time, and uncover our ever changing, ever contradictory opinions about it.
"Nature:
A Literary History", 15X