大象传媒

John McCarthy asks why we are drawn to and drawn into forests, both real and imaginary. And what do we find there?

From Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea to Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, woodland has often been seen as magical, strange, sacred and scary. The ancient forests of northern Europe were where folk tales began - the wolf, the witch, the gingerbread house, and the poor woodcutter.

Mostly though forests, whether invented or actual, stand in relation to civilisation and, as such, have a particular imaginative resonance.

In Dante's Paradise Lost, he sees the forest being domesticated, from the dark forest of the Inferno, an allegory of the soul's state of sinfulness and error to the ancient forest of Eden at the top of Purgatory, which is a kind of park under the jurisdiction of the City of God.

Following in the footsteps of the poet John Clare on his walk out of Epping Forest and away from his asylum, John McCarthy learns why the forest is not just a setting for so many stories, it is central to what happens next with rules of its own and a way of intervening into the drama of those travelling through it.

The programme featuress music by Paul Weller and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Producer: Emily Williams
A Whistledown production for 大象传媒 Radio 4