Erasmus Darwin's Beautification of the Sublime: Materialism, Religion and the Reception of The Economy of Vegetation in the Early 1790s.

This paper investigates the reception of Erasmus Darwin's The Economy of Vegetation, drawing on reviews, letters and poems by admirers to examine why the initial publication of this theologically ambiguous text was uncontroversial. Part of the explanation lies in the poem's perceived genre: the didactic nature poem, a traditionally religious form. A number of reviewers described the work in language that invokes a religious tradition of nature writing. However, this paper suggests that such a reading is difficult to sustain, given Darwin's portrayal of both human and natural processes in a way that continually undercuts the sublime aspects of creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]