The Wind in the Willows: Kenneth Grahame and Neopaganism Essay

The nothingness in the Willows Kenneth Grahame and Neopaganism The hit of the English countryside--cultivated or wild, pastoral or primeval, it was an endless source of ambition for eighteenth-century Romantic poets. Such notables as Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley envisioned ancient and exotic classic gods in familiar, typically British settings. Douglas Bush says of Keats, For him the common sights of Hampstead Heath could stir how poets had first conceived of fauns and dryads, of Psyche and Pan and Narcissus and Endymion ( Pagan Myth 46). Later writers, clear influenced by the Romantic world view, would describe idealized pastoral scenes in terms of the rich meadow-grass . . . of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable . . . . the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous . . . (Grahame, Wind 911). This was the haunt of Nature personified past suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe make out upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror-- then he felt wonderfully at peace and happy . . . he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper motto the feebleminded sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking complicate on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the openhanded chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only but fallen away from the parted lips saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs abandoned in majestic ease on the sward . . . . (912 Pans appearance in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn constitutes my most vivid impressio... ...dence in the Victorian Fin de Siecle . Princeton Princeton UP, 1986. Grahame, Kenneth. Pagan Papers . 5th ed. 1898. London Lane, 1914. ---. The Wind in the Willows . 1908. Classics of Childrens Literature . Ed. John W. Griffith and Charl es H. Frey. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River Prentice, 1996. 865-957. Grahame, Kenneth. Yesterdays Authors of Books for Children . Ed. Anne Commire. Vol. 1. Detroit Gale, 1977. 144-153. Green, Peter. Kenneth Grahame A Biography . Cleveland World, 1959. Kenneth Grahame. Childrens Literature Review . Ed. Gerard J. Senick. Vol. 5. Detroit Gale, 1983. 109-136. Sale, Roger. Kenneth Grahame. Fairy Tales and After . Cambridge Harvard UP, 1978. 165-193. Wullschlager, Jackie. Kenneth Grahame Et in Arcadia Ego. Inventing Wonderland . brisk York Free P, 1995. 143-174.