Green World is a literary concept defined by critic Northrop Frye in The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton; Princeton University press, 1957), pp. 182–4. In some comedies by William Shakespeare, the main characters escape the order of a city for a forested and wild setting adjacent to the city. This natural environment is often described as a green world. It is in this more loosely structured, fantastic environment that issues surrounding social order, romantic relationships, and inter-generational strife, which are a prominent part of the "city world", become resolved, facilitating a return to the normal order. Recent literary critics drawn to eco-criticism have occasionally found the concept valuable to their work as well.
Famous quotes containing the words green world, green and/or world:
“It was a green world,
Unchanging holly with the curled
Points, cypress and conifers,
All that through the winter bears
Coarsened fertility against the frost.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Commit a crime and the world is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)