This course will explore the rich and various ways in which literature has constructed and interpreted the green-written world: as the symbol of youth, love, beauty, and passing time; as a pastoral paradise where man's fall from grace brings death into the world; as a scene of cyclical renewal and spiritual rebirth; as the archetypal symbol of man's desire to transform chaos into civilization and art-to tame, order, idealize, and copy nature's bounty while humanizing, plundering, and destroying the environment. We will a engage a wide range of genres from the Renaissance to the present: Burnett's classic children's book, The Secret Garden, Shakespeare's comedy, As You Like It, selections from Genesis and Paradise Lost, selected nature lyrics by Marlowe, Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Wordsworth, Keats, and Frost; Gluck's The Wild Iris, Woolf's To the Lighthouse, contemporary prose meditations on building gardens and protecting the earth by Jamaica Kincaid and Michael Pollan. We will conclude with the hilarious Peter Sellers film, Being There, where Chance's proverbial gardening lore is taken for political wisdom. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active participation in class discussion, and 20 pages of writing in the form of short essays. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference to first-year students. This course is writing intensive.