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The Role of Nature

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Introduction
Considering the history of literature, the conception of Nature seems to be a quite complex question. 'Nature' is not a concept that can be grasped easily and it often requires discussing some great philosophical conceptions like 'Pantheism' or 'Deism'. However, my paper will not deal in detail with such vast enquiries. I rather want to focus more accurately on how 'Nature' is used by Pope and Coleridge, respectively. With other words, I would like to analyse the function of the concept of 'Nature'. The fact is, that even if these poets do not exhaustively characterise ‘Nature' itself, they employ it in a lot of different analogies and metaphors to articulate and embody for example ideas about 'morality' (Pope) or the intimate …show more content…

In that context, the poet defends a very specific conception of ‘order' and claims in favour of an idea that was very popular at that time: the Great Chain of Beings. The latter is a philosophical doctrine that, a priori, explains the unity of creation. Of course, all arguments assume the existence of God. In vindicating the perfect unity of creation, this doctrine leads to a sort of theodicy-like conclusion, that is, the claim that the world is the best that God could have created. This is an important point that I will consider again later.

For now, consider the fact that Pope largely deems the idea of a scala naturae. It describes the ladders of the world of observable reality, "Creation's ample range", from the "green myriads in the peopled grass" to "Man's imperial race" (I, 207-10). The Great Chain of Beings implies that all living species are intimately related to each other in a strong hierarchical order. An obvious gradation in the mental and sensual faculties exists among God's creatures. Therefore, each creature is subordinated to an other one and all creatures to man and beyond. God of course is on the top of the Chain. Hence, all beings have a clearly fixed place.

Since man lacks full knowledge of the stations that are beyond him, the hierarchy of the Great Chain of Beings also advocates for some humility in the presence of God's creation. As Pope argues:

Say first, of God above, or man below,
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