Hortus Conclusus: A Psychoanalytical Study of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall and Andrew Marvell’s The Garden

Abstract

In the beginning the whole creation of the environment is considered as one whole garden, where human is found to hem in with nature in the Garden of Eden. As a penalty, when Adam and Eve were hounded out from the garden God did not fully disconnect human and nature; they were made to sustain life from nature through cultivation and Gardening. Crossing epoch, nature adds more than one kind of ‘meaning’ and the meaning given by poets depends on a good deal more than the quality of an individual soul. The experience and the description of nature differ, not only from individual to individual but also from era to era. In the beginning of the English poetry Chaucer did not see nature precisely; during his age the writings were inked on what he perceived in nature. In the seventeenth century, Robert Herrick influenced Johnson and the classics in an elegant treatment in the theme of earthly transience. Subsequently, Clare’s view spins from the object to what it tells him in detail.