Description

This text rethinks American literary history by focusing on the non-human, environmental agents that have shaped its development. Ranging from the late-sixteenth-century English exploration of North America through the mid-nineteenth-century industrialization of the United States, this text proposes an innovative, eco-cultural approach to the study of American literary history, documenting how ostensibly human literary culture emerges from much broader eco-historical conditions. Ranging from the late-sixteenth-century English exploration of North America through the mid-nineteenth-century industrialization of the United States, this text proposes an innovative, eco-cultural approach to the study of American literary history, documenting how ostensibly human literary culture emerges from much broader eco-historical conditions. This original and provocative study tells the story of American literary history from the perspective of its environmental context. Weaving together close readings of early American texts with ecological histories of tobacco, potatoes, apples and honey bees, Michael Ziser presents a method for literary criticism that explodes the conceptual distinction between the civilized and natural world. Beginning with the English exploration of Virginia in the sixteenth century, Ziser argues that the settlement of the 'New World' - and the cultivation and exploitation of its bounty - dramatically altered how writers used language to describe the phenomena they encountered on the frontier. Examining the work of Harriot, Grainger, Cooper, Thoreau and others, Ziser reveals how these authors, whether consciously or not, transcribed the vibrant ecology of North America, and the ways that the environment helped codify a uniquely American literary aesthetic of lasting importance. Introduction: more-than-human literary history; Part I. Leaves and Roots: 1. Sovereign remedies; 2. Staple-colony circumspection; Part II. Fruits and Flowers: 3. The pomology of Eden; 4. Beeing in the world; Conclusion: 5. Walled in and farmed out: pastoral isolation and georgic collectivities; Notes.