The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

What if the way you feel about mountains, forests, and storms isn't natural at all, but something humanity learned? Biese's 1888 masterpiece traces the long evolution of our emotional relationship with nature, from antiquity through the medieval period to modern times. He argues that different eras projected different feelings onto the same landscapes, and that this transformation reveals something fundamental about cultural consciousness. The book hinges on a compelling tension: the Christian tradition that saw nature as a symbol of divine transcendence versus older pagan traditions that felt an intimate, physical kinship with the earth. Through careful readings of poetry, philosophy, and religious texts, Biese maps how we moved from seeing nature as alive with gods to seeing it as a mirror for human emotion. For anyone curious about where our modern environmental feelings come from, or how literature shapes how we inhabit the world, this remains a startlingly original work.