존 클레어의 생태적 비전

The Ecological Vision of John Clare

&nbsp;&nbsp;John Clare&quot;s description of himself as a "Northamptonshire Peasant" reveals his regional identity that situates his voice in an East Midland county that was becoming increasingly a zone of ecological conflict. In the early nineteenth century, English countryside was marked by unequal struggle between the advocates of parliamentary enclosure and the forlorn adherents of the older, sustainable methods of open-field agriculture. Clare entered this minefield with the publication of his first collection of poems, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery(1820), which forthwith denounce the "improvement" of his local environment. At the same time he evokes with elegiac melancholy the gradual disappearance of the common field, marshes, and "waste" lands, and the extinction of an entire way of life in harmony with the natural cycle.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Clare&quot;s ecological vision is confirmed by his powerful poems in defense of the local environment. He does not base his arguments on economic utility or aesthetic pleasure, but speaks directly for the Earth and its creatures, attributing intrinsic value to all the flora and fauna that constitute the local ecosystem. His denunciation of enclosure arises from his anger at "accursed wealth" and its environmental impact. As an environmental advocate, Clare is virtually unprecedented in the extent of his insight into the complex relation between ecological devastation and social injustice.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The ecological basis of Clare&quot;s linguistic practice seems to furnish a suggestive model for contemporary ecological writing. His regional dialect is an intentional feature of his poetry that contributes effectively to representing his sense of rootedness in a particular landscape. Just as he resisted the neatness and artificial ordering of landscape, so he increasingly rejected the efforts of his editors to tidy up his poems. By refusing to punctuate his poems or conform to "refined" standards of diction, grammar, and spelling, he created an "unenclosed" verse that provides a linguistic analogue to the free, unenclosed landscape. Clare&quot;s "ever green" ecolect offers a powerful model for the ecological writers in a post-industrial landscape.