Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T13:39:28.900Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Comparing natural and artistic beauty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

By
Donald W. Crawford
Edited by
Salim Kemal  and
Ivan Gaskell
Donald W. Crawford
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Salim Kemal
Affiliation:
University of Dundee
Ivan Gaskell
Affiliation:
Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The title of this article might trigger in the memory of some readers a famous poetic couplet:

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree.

Is such a comparison legitimate? Is it even meaningful? Just for a moment let us pursue a negative answer to this latter question by imagining that Joyce Kilmer originally wrote the poem as a student in a creative writing course, and received the following criticism from his instructor:

Although it is sometimes a good idea to begin a poem with a paradoxical thought, yours is quite confused. Your first sentence wrongly assumes that a meaningful comparison can be made between trees and poems in respect of their loveliness. But a tree is beautiful because its organic form delights the eye, while a poem's beauty lies in its expression of human thought and feeling, which is something quite different. There is no way to compare them, and the rest of your poetic effort proves the point, because all you do is slurp on about the tree, without even a nod toward great poetry. Perhaps you should try a course in the School of Business.

This is not an entirely fictitious example. Formalist genre critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren actually dismissed the validity of the poem's opening couplet, remarking that “the two kinds of loveliness, that of art and that of nature, are not comparable.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts , pp. 183 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×