Thoreau's Sense of Place: Essays in American Environmental Writing (American Land & Life) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877457204 ISBN 13: 9780877457206

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2000

Synopsis

Recent Thoreau studies have shifted to an emphasis on the green" Thoreau, on Thoreau the environmentalist, rooted firmly in particular places and interacting with particular objects. In the wake of Buell's Environmental Imagination, the nineteen essayists in this challenging volume address the central questions in Thoreau studies today: how “green,” how immersed in a sense of place, was Thoreau really, and how has this sense of place affected the tradition of nature writing in America?

The contributors to this stimulating collection address the ways in which Thoreau and his successors attempt to cope with the basic epistemological split between perceiver and place inherent in writing about nature; related discussions involve the kinds of discourse most effective for writing about place. They focus on the impact on Thoreau and his successors of culturally constructed assumptions deriving from science, politics, race, gender, history, and literary conventions. Finally, they explore the implications surrounding a writer's appropriation or even exploitation of places and objects.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Schneider is professor of English and Slife Professor in the Humanities at Wartburg College. He is the author of Henry David Thoreau in the Twayne United States Authors series and the editor of Approaches to Teaching Thoreau's "Walden" and Other Works.

From Library Journal:

This unique, scholarly collection of essays painstakingly examines the writing of Thoreau, comparing him with other environmental writers and stressing literary scholarship within environmental studies. In this lofty collection of essays edited by Schneider (English, Wartburg Coll.), critics and followers of Thoreau break apart his writing to investigate, word by word, the biocentric and anthropocentric nature of his works. The collection emphasizes four distinct themes on place: relating, imagining, socially constructing, and saving. It compares Thoreau!s writing to that of such other authors as Annie Dillard and Edward Abbey. Fascinating discourses compare the poetry of Wendell Berry as well as the paintings of the first generation of the Hudson River School of landscape painters. Recommended for academic libraries."Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board Lib., Pinellas Park, FL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0877457204
• ISBN 13: 9780877457206
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324
• Editor: Schneider Richard J.