American Georgics: Economy and Environment in Early American Literature

by Timothy Sweet

Overview

In classical terms the georgic celebrates the working landscape, cultivated to become fruitful and prosperous, in contrast to the idealized or fanciful landscapes of the pastoral. Arguing that economic considerations must become central to any understanding of the human community's engagement with the natural environment, Timothy Sweet identifies a distinct literary mode he calls the American georgic.

Offering a fresh approach to ecocritical and environmentally-oriented literary studies, Sweet traces the history of the American georgic from its origins in late sixteenth-century English literature promoting the colonization of the Americas through the mid-nineteenth century, ending with George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature (1864), the foundational text in the conservationist movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812203189
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	04/19/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	996 KB

About the Author

Timothy Sweet is Professor of English at West Virginia University. He is the author also of Traces of War: Poetry, Photography, and the Crisis of the Union.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Economy and Environment in Sixteenth-Century Promotional Literature
2. "God Sells Us All Things for Our Labour": John Smith's Generall Historie
3. "Wonder-Working Providence" of the Market
4. "Admirable Oeconomy": Robert Beverley's Calculus of Compensation
5. Ideologies of Farming: Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Rush, and Brown
6. Cherokee "Improvements" and the Removal Debate
7. "Co-Workers with Nature": Cooper, Thoreau, and Marsh

Notes
Woks Cited
Index
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"Sweet offers a wide-ranging examination of the agricultural work of North American men and women as seen through the lens of literature. . . . Sweet's greatest achievement is his ability to integrate hundreds of years of discourse about the North American continent into a cohesive narrative of evolving perceptions of environment and humankind's role in shaping it."

American Literature

"Thoughtful, critically intelligent, and well-informed."

Harvard University Lawrence Buell

"Sweet offers a wide-ranging examination of the agricultural work of North American men and women as seen through the lens of literature. . . . Sweet's greatest achievement is his ability to integrate hundreds of years of discourse about the North American continent into a cohesive narrative of evolving perceptions of environment and humankind's role in shaping it."—American Literature

"Thoughtful, critically intelligent, and well-informed."—Lawrence Buell, Harvard University

From the Publisher