Ecosublime: Environmental Awe and Terror from New World to OddworldExplores 19th-century, modern, postmodern, and millennial texts as they portray the changing ecological face of America Lee Rozelle probes the metaphor of environmental catastrophe in American literature of the last 150 years. In each instance, Rozelle finds evidence that the ecosublime--nature experienced as an instance of wonder and fear--profoundly reflects spiritual and political responses to the natural world, America’s increasingly anti-ecological trajectory, and the ascendance of a post-natural landscape. In the 19th century, Rozelle argues, Isabella Bird and Edgar Allan Poe represented the western wilderness as culturally constructed and idealized landscapes. Gardens, forests, and frontiers are conceptual frameworks that either misrepresent or uphold ecological space. Modernists like Nathanael West and William Carlos Williams, on the other hand, portray urban space as either wastelands or mythical urban gardens. A chapter on Charles W. Chesnutt and Rebecca Harding Davis analyzes a new breed of literary eco-advocate, educating and shocking mainstream readers through depictions of ecological disaster. A later chapter probes the writings of Edward Abbey and the Unabomber Manifesto to delve into the sublime dimensions of environmental activism, monkey-wrenching, and eco-terrorism. |
Contents
The Journal of Julius Rodman and A Ladys Life | 10 |
Modernist Reactions to Urban Environments in Eliot | 36 |
Salem Cigarettes Field Notes | 50 |
Copyright | |
1 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Ecosublime: Environmental Awe and Terror from New World to Oddworld Lee Rozelle Limited preview - 2006 |
Ecosublime: Environmental Awe and Terror from New World to Oddworld Lee Rozelle No preview available - 2023 |
Common terms and phrases
acts aesthetic American animals appear approach argues attempt awareness bears beautiful becomes Bird body chapter comes comprehension connections Cooper critical cultural death depictions describes desire Earth ecocritical ecocriticism ecological ecosublime environmental experience explains face fails feeling figures forest functions garden gives global green ground Henry horror human idea images imagination industrial Land landscape leaves literary literature lives looks Mars material means mill mind Miss Lonelyhearts moment mountain move narrator natural environment Noise notes object observes offers opens organic park plant play possibilities postmodern processes readers realize referent remain represent response reveals rhetoric Rodman scene seeks seems sense simulated slave social space sublime suggests sustainable terror thing tion transcendence trees turn Twin Peaks Uncle Julius urban vision White wild Wolfe woods writing