Reading the Roots

Reading the Roots PDF Author: Michael P. Branch
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820325484
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Reading the Roots is an unprecedented anthology of outstanding early writings about American nature--a rich, influential, yet critically underappreciated body of work. Rather than begin with Henry David Thoreau, who is often identified as the progenitor of American nature writing, editor Michael P. Branch instead surveys the long tradition that prefigures and anticipates Thoreau and his literary descendants. The selections in Reading the Roots describe a diversity of landscapes, wildlife, and natural phenomena, and their authors represent many different nationalities, cultural affiliations, religious views, and ideological perspectives. The writings gathered here also range widely in terms of subject, rhetorical form, and disciplinary approach--from promotional tracts and European narratives of contact with Native Americans to examples of scientific theology and romantic nature writing. The volume also includes a critical introduction discussing the cultural, scientific, and literary value of early American nature writing; headnotes that contextualize all authors and selections; and a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources in the field. Reading the Roots at last makes early American landscapes--and a range of literary responses to them--accessible to scholars, students, and general readers.

Great American Nature Writing

Great American Nature Writing PDF Author: Joseph Wood Krutch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural history
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description


Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing

Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing PDF Author: Scott Slovic
Publisher: University of Utah Press
ISBN: 9780874803624
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Reading the Roots

Reading the Roots PDF Author: Michael P. Branch
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820325484
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Reading the Roots is an unprecedented anthology of outstanding early writings about American nature--a rich, influential, yet critically underappreciated body of work. Rather than begin with Henry David Thoreau, who is often identified as the progenitor of American nature writing, editor Michael P. Branch instead surveys the long tradition that prefigures and anticipates Thoreau and his literary descendants. The selections in Reading the Roots describe a diversity of landscapes, wildlife, and natural phenomena, and their authors represent many different nationalities, cultural affiliations, religious views, and ideological perspectives. The writings gathered here also range widely in terms of subject, rhetorical form, and disciplinary approach--from promotional tracts and European narratives of contact with Native Americans to examples of scientific theology and romantic nature writing. The volume also includes a critical introduction discussing the cultural, scientific, and literary value of early American nature writing; headnotes that contextualize all authors and selections; and a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources in the field. Reading the Roots at last makes early American landscapes--and a range of literary responses to them--accessible to scholars, students, and general readers.

This Incomparable Land

This Incomparable Land PDF Author: Thomas Jefferson Lyon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Nature writing is essential to awakening an ecological way of seeing. The author covers the full spectrum of the genre, including field guides, travel and adventure stories, and essays on solitary and back-country living. This new edition contains an updated bibliography of primary and secondary sources in nature writing through the end of the 20th century.

Early American Nature Writers

Early American Nature Writers PDF Author: Daniel Patterson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


A Natural History of Nature Writing

A Natural History of Nature Writing PDF Author: Frank Stewart
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610912470
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A Natural History of Nature Writing is a penetrating overview of the origins and development of a uniquely American literature. Essayist and poet Frank Stewart describes in rich and compelling prose the lives and works of the most prominent American nature writers of the19th and 20th centuries, including: Henry D. Thoreau, the father of American nature writing. John Burroughs, a schoolteacher and failed businessman who found his calling as a writer and elevated the nature essay to a loved and respected literary form. John Muir, founder of Sierra Club, who celebrated the wilderness of the Far West as few before him had. Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee and scholar who extended our moral responsibility to include all animals and plants. Rachel Carson, a scientist who raised the consciousness of the nation by revealing the catastrophic effects of human intervention on the Earth's living systems. Edward Abbey, an outspoken activist who charted the boundaries of ecological responsibility and pushed these boundaries to political extremes. Stewart highlights the controversies ignited by the powerful and eloquent prose of these and other writers with their expansive – and often strongly political – points of view. Combining a deeply-felt sense of wonder at the beauty surrounding us with a rare ability to capture and explain the meaning of that beauty, nature writers have had a profound effect on American culture and politics. A Natural History of Nature Writing is an insightful examination of an important body of American literature.

Nature Writing

Nature Writing PDF Author: Don Scheese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134980779
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In this comprehensive study of the genre, Don Scheese traces its evolution from the pastoralism evident in the natural history observations of Aristotle and the poetry of Virgil to current American writers. He documents the emergence of the modern form of nature writing as a reaction to industrialization. Scheese's personal observations of natural settings sharpen the reader's understanding of the dynamics between author and locale. His study is further informed by ample use of illustrations and close readings core writers such as Thoreau, John Muir, and Mary Austin showing how each writer's work exemplifies the pastoral tradition and celebrate a spirit of place in the United States.

American Nature Writing 1996

American Nature Writing 1996 PDF Author: John A. Murray
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN: 9780871563897
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Everything you always wanted to know about the black suit, and the men who wear them. Harvey (English, U. of Cambridge) integrates the histories of fashion, culture, and art with the rise and fall of the color black among the Spanish aristocrats, through the 19th century, as worn by Mussolini's minion, and to the present day's leather jacketed "punks." Richly illustrated (black and white, of course) by photographs and reproductions of the artists of each period, the color black is given a thorough historical treatment. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Nature Writing and America

Nature Writing and America PDF Author: Peter A. Fritzell
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Fritzell (English, Lawrence U.) investigates the unique evolution of nature writing in America--first exemplified by Thoreau's Walden, and later refined and amplified in the works of Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey, and Annie Dillard, among others. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Environmental Imagination

The Environmental Imagination PDF Author: Lawrence Buell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674262433
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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Book Description
With the environmental crisis comes a crisis of the imagination, a need to find new ways to understand nature and humanity's relation to it. This is the challenge Lawrence Buell takes up in The Environmental Imagination, the most ambitious study to date of how literature represents the natural environment. With Thoreau's Walden as a touchstone, Buell gives us a far-reaching account of environmental perception, the place of nature in the history of western thought, and the consequences for literary scholarship of attempting to imagine a more "ecocentric" way of being. In doing so, he provides a major new understanding of Thoreau's achievement and, at the same time, a profound rethinking of our literary and cultural reflections on nature. The green tradition in American writing commands Buell's special attention, particularly environmental nonfiction from colonial times to the present. In works by writers from Crevecoeur to Wendell Berry, John Muir to Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson to Leslie Silko, Mary Austin to Edward Abbey, he examines enduring environmental themes such as the dream of relinquishment, the personification of the nonhuman, an attentiveness to environmental cycles, a devotion to place, and a prophetic awareness of possible ecocatastrophe. At the center of this study we find an image of Walden as a quest for greater environmental awareness, an impetus and guide for Buell as he develops a new vision of environmental writing and seeks a new way of conceiving the relation between human imagination and environmental actuality in the age of industrialization. Intricate and challenging in its arguments, yet engagingly and elegantly written, The Environmental Imagination is a major work of scholarship, one that establishes a new basis for reading American nature writing.