Revisiting Science and Literature: Chateaubriand’s Ecological Discourse

Abstract

Seemingly, science and literature don't have anything in common. Actually, fields such as medicine and ecology have maintained a close relationship with literature, this perhaps because they share the same humanistic values. This article examines this relationship, and relies on Chateaubriand's works as a writer and his deeds as a politician to explain how the ecology of forests inherited from a long aristocratic tradition which continued to exist during the French Revolution, and allowed the reforestation of France from 1827 on.