동물 시의 관점 연구

A Study of Perspectives of the Animal Poems

This article is to pursue the diverse perspectives of animal poems from the late 18th century to the 20th century. Some poets of the 18th century began to have an interest in nature, which appeared in their works as a main theme rather than as a background. In the 18th century nature meant beautiful landscapes chiefly of trees and flowers with animals excluded. But with man’s increasing awareness of the living beings in nature, the poets steadily began to write animal poems. The archtype of perspective on animals is God’s because when he made them first, he blessed with accepting them as independent living beings and taking care by feeding them. When from God’s perspective surveying the animal poems we have found two distinctive perspectives of the animal poets: the realistic description and the objective attitude toward animals. G. M. Hopkins, D. H. Lawrence and Marianne Moore and Ted Hughes share the realistic point-of-views by describing the biological and ecological traits on the basis of the keen observation, which proves their acceptance of animals as living independent beings. And in the objective perspective Moore is the most distinctive. Her view on the animals is nearest to God’s perspective in that she accepts the living animals as wonderful created beings with “grace” and “excellence”. On the other hand, the romantic poets, Keats and Shelly, show the most selfish perspective with trying to satisfy their private wishes through the birds. They failed in recognizing them as the independent identity by using them as symbolic emblems or abstracted images. Hopkins in his “The Windhover” shows the excellence in the realistic description on the flying hawk but his perspective has a limitation by replacing the mastery of the Hawk with that of Christ exposing his private faith. And Lawrence with Hughes reveals in their animal poems the man-centered perspective using animals as a medium to express their unique ideas furtively.