“Earth! have they gone into you?” An Ecocritical Reading of the Relationship Between Man, Nature and War in Isaac Rosenberg’s Poems

Abstract

This paper considers some of the poems written by the English soldier-poet Isaac Rosenberg during the First World War in order to show his ecological awareness in the depiction of and reflection upon the devastating effects of warfare on the environment and on the man-nature relationship. By adopting an ecocritical perspective, his works will be studied in relation to con¬cepts of space and place, the peculiar features of the war zone, and the elaboration of the pastoral tradition. In conclusion, it will be suggested that the destruction of nature serves as a metaphor for the physical and psychological suffering of men.