Chapter 16 - Environment and Empire

Summary

This chapter studies the relationship between two of the foremost examples of georgic poetry in English – James Thomson’s The Seasons and Vita Sackville-West’s The Land, and the tradition’s primary ancient model, Virgil’s Georgics. It argues that georgic poetry is deeply implicated in the politics of empire in Roman no less than in British contexts, using themes of geography, travel and patriotism to showcase and celebrate imperial power. Simultaneously, georgic poetry can be read as a kind of archive, celebrating the artisanal practices of rural communities under threat from profit-driven economic models, marrying intense appreciation of the natural world with an equally intense awareness of that world’s fragility. As such, georgic poetry can be usefully read as dramatizing certain contradictions and challenges which remain relevant in global politics in the twenty-first century.