A Green Study of Tagore’s Gitanjali

Abstract

Relation between human race and non-human part of nature is as old as human consciousness. The most recent approach to this relation is depicted through theory of eco-criticism. Nature is represented in literature in many different ways and arguably two important viewpoints are romanticism and transcendentalism. Among them Romanticism was patronized by Wordsworth and transcendentalism was promoted by American think-tank Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson’s idea of Ecocriticism refers to American part and Wordsworth’s idea of Romanticism is a green study of British counterpart. Interestingly both viewpoints are found in Gitanjali. This study highlights the natural aspects reflected in Gitanjali with focus on the idea that Tagore not only floats above the material world in some aesthetic atmosphere, rather, plays a vital part in an immensely complex global system, in which energy, matter, and idea interact.