The Wind in the Willows: Kenneth Grahame and Neopaganism Essay

The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame and Neopaganism The beauty of the English countryside--cultivated or wild, pastoral or primeval, it was an endless source of inspiration for eighteenth-century Romantic poets. Such notables as Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley envisioned ancient and exotic Hellenic gods in familiar, typically British settings. Douglas Bush says of Keats, For him the common sights of Hampstead Heath could suggest how poets had first conceived of fauns and dryads, of Psyche and Pan and Narcissus and Endymion ( hedonist Myth 46). Later writers, clearly 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 Then suddenly the Mole felt a great idolatry fall 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-- indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy . . . he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight saw the stern, aquiline nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners saw the ruffle muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the part lips saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward . . . . (912 Pans appearance in The Piper at the Gates of pervade 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 Charles H. Frey. 4 th ed. amphetamine 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 . New York Free P, 1995. 143-174.