The treatment of nature in English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth

A scholarly survey examines how English literature and the visual arts moved from a classical, external view of nature toward a more subjective, expressive sensibility that anticipated Romantic thinking. It traces developments in eighteenth-century poetry and detects early articulations of later Romantic ideas, then broadens the inquiry to fiction, travel writing, garden design, and landscape painting to show parallel shifts across media. Close readings and historical context reveal recurring themes, such as the growing valuation of natural feeling, the gradual decline of neoclassical conventions, and the cumulative preparation that made later poets and painters appear as summative figures.