Reading the "Book of Nature" in the Long Eighteenth-Century

Samantha C. Harvey, Boise State University

Abstract

This project investigates a key concept in the British Long Eighteenth-Century: the “Book of Nature,” or the idea that the physical landscape can be “read” as a book of spiritual meaning or alternative Scripture in revealing God. While the term is in continuous use from late Antiquity onwards, the term undergoes a crucial transformation from the seventeenth century to the Romantic period, as changes in theology, literature and science radically change the concept of nature and its relation to the individual self.