Natural Space in Literature: imagination and Environment in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Fiction and Poetry by Tom Henighan (review)

HUMANITIES 4'3 Tom Henighan. Natural Space in Literature: imagination and Environment in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Fiction and Poetry Golden Dog Press, 1982, ix, 283 This book is not without merit. It contains an excellent analysis of the symbolism in Lawrence's Women in Love, It offers astute observations on the implicit social content in the literature of paradisal retreat. It also presents a useful introduction to the work of H.G, Wells, However, I find myself wondering if its author felt in writing it what I felt in reading it. Halfway through Natural Space in Literature I became conscious of having no clear idea of what it was about. The book begins - ominously enough - with a 'brief overview' of the idea of nature in 'western civilization.' It then chats about Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. It considers science, technology, and Darwinism , It discusses gardens, fields, snowy wastes, 'the ecological totality: 'the paradisal option: and 'the modern sense of alienation and despair.' It has central chapters on the novels of Hardy, Wells, and Lawrence, but it also glances at works by (among others) Tolstoy, Pater, Hemingway, Turgenev, Zola, Knut Hamsun, Conrad, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Jack London, Tennyson, Faulkner, Johannes V, Jensen, Kenneth Graharne , Balzac, and William Golding, The chapters on gardens,fields, and wildernesses are obviously relevant to the author's stated intention which, he informs us in his Preface, is to attempt 'a comprehensive investigation of the image of the natural environment in modern literature .' The discussions of natural settings in the works of Hardy and Lawrence are equally relevant. However, large sections of Natural Space in Literature seem to have nothing to do with each other or with the author's central preoccupation, For example, the chapter on Wells has more to do with outer space than natural space, and the analysis of Lawrence focuses more on natural urges than on natural settings. The fact that much ofthe book appears to have been conceived, written, and organized in a random and arbitrary way is the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of the author's failure to offer stable and precise definitions of his main subjects and key terms, In his Preface Henighan uses the phrase 'natural space: appropriately and precisely, to refer to any setting or environment which is neither urban nor technological. But by the end of Part One he has broadened his meaning so that it is identified with anything material outside the 'inner space' of human consciousness, By the end of the book even this definition is inadequate to cover the confusingly broad range of meanings Henighan wants the phrase to carry, Of course, in its widest sense, 'natural space' could refer to the entire universe and all it contains, and so, strictly speaking, one can't really accuse Henighan of being off topic, But I can say that his book 414 LE'ITERS IN CANADA 1983 reminds me of the sort of essay one receives from ambitious undergraduates who have not yet learned the art of properly limiting their research topics. To add to the confusion Henighan's language is often disastrously vague. Pseudo-technical terms such as 'biomes' and 'proto-phases' and 'man's vertebrate eyes' compete for the reader's attention with ponderous and stale references to ' the power of words: 'the quest for selfknowledge : 'the flux of life: and 'the perennial and ever-new human landscape: Henighan rarely uses one word when two will do: he does not speak, for example, of 'Romantic poems' but rather of 'the language structures which we classify as Romantic poems: Here is the second sentence in the book: 'Literature, I believe, is one distinct strand of psycho-social evolution, but it is important to recall its connections with those other systems of knowledge man has created in making himself what he is: Once one recovers from the pomposity of 'psycho-social evolution: one is struck with how unnecessarily confusing this is. In what sense is literature 'a distinct strand' of evolution? What is meant by 'system of knowledge'? And exactly how is literature connected to 'those other systems'? But the real problem with this sentence, as, indeed, with so much of the book, is not that...