Against Nature? Vigny's Stones

Vigny's major poem, 'La maison du berger' (first published in 1844), has long been seen as a celebration of the provinces and a denunciation of the alien setting of the modern city. But his relationship with the characteristic spaces of modernity, including land that he himself owned in the countryside, is more complex. Here, we map how Vigny's shifting assessment of boundaries, including those marked out by stones placed in the ground, can shed light on his unsettling reappraisal of the the human relationship with nature and in turn on the emergence of an acute, if troubled, ecological awareness.