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adopt myriad theoretical approaches on issuesincluding cognitive questions of trees and the historical, symbolical and phenomenological forestlandscape. Harrison’s work Forest Shadow of Civilization (1992) traced down the history and setout the symbolism of trees, serving as a good example on symbolic aspect. It broadens ourknowledge on western cultural imagination on forests and illuminates to us the ecologicalquagmire we are in. When it comes to phenomenological perspective, The Language of the Forest:Landscape and Phonological Iconism in Umeda (1995) offers us a new idea of how forest as aninhabitance shaped the language of Umeda. Simon Schama (1995) has produced in his workLandscape and Memory a historical account of how the meanings of forests differ dramatically inthe various western national cultures across the ocean, including Germany, France, England,America and Poland. Most of such essential studies delve into the meanings of trees inanthropological perspectives, using specific history and topography as text rather than on literarytexts as this dissertation would do.
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Chapter I Whitman’s Senses and the Monotonic Perception of Trees in Time

Walt Whitman is most frequently debated due to the polemical Leaves of Grass. The scholarsgravitated to him in terms of his fascination on body would largely base their works on the poem.Those who attempted to fit Whitman into the scheme of “nature writing” turn their eyes as muchon the poem as on his work Specimen Days.Whitman’s Specimen Days is in his own term an original autobiography after its sort writtenunder modern American conditions. After the lengthy jottings of civil war in his experience, heturned abruptly to nature. The reason was given directly to the readers. As a man went through andexhausted by vicissitudes, Whitman came round to the idea that only nature remained. Thus, hehoped to partake his writings of the colour, aroma and texture of nature to bring the spent workersand crowded city closer to nature. The contemporaries of Whitman as Matthiessen believed “havebeen trained to forget that the human body is itself the richest and raciest phrase-book” (36-37).Besides, according to William Major, the experience in nature for the rebuilding of his bodyshatters his mental outlook that nature is merely the prologue of a healthy democracy anddissolves at the same time the boundaries between himself and nature. His concept of natureslipped gradually from the machine as Karl Marx elaborated to a presence with inherency andorganism.

I. Caresser of Life
Chapter I Whitman’s Senses and the Monotonic Perception of Trees in TimeWalt Whitman is most frequently debated due to the polemical Leaves of Grass. The scholarsgravitated to him in terms of his fascination on body would largely base their works on the poem.Those who attempted to fit Whitman into the scheme of “nature writing” turn their eyes as muchon the poem as on his work Specimen Days.Whitman’s Specimen Days is in his own term an original autobiography after its sort writtenunder modern American conditions. After the lengthy jottings of civil war in his experience, heturned abruptly to nature. The reason was given directly to the readers. As a man went through andexhausted by vicissitudes, Whitman came round to the idea that only nature remained. Thus, hehoped to partake his writings of the colour, aroma and texture of nature to bring the spent workersand crowded city