Captivity Literature and the Environment: Nineteenth-Century American Cross-Cultural Collaborations / Edition 1

by Kyhl Lyndgaard

Overview

In his study of captivity narratives, Kyhl Lyndgaard argues that these accounts have influenced land-use policy and environmental attitudes at the same time that they reveal the complex relationship between ethnicity, landscape, and authorship. In connecting these themes, Lyndgaard offers readers an alternative environmental literature, one that is dependent on an understanding of nature as home rather than as a place of temporary retreat. He examines three captivity narratives written in the 1820s and 1830s - A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, The Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, and Life of Black Hawk -all of which engage with the Jacksonian policy of Indian removal and resist tropes of the so-called Vanishing Indian. As Lyndgaard shows, the authors and the editors with whom they collaborated often saw their stories as a plea for environmental and social justice. At the same time, audiences have embraced them for their vision of a more inclusive and less exploitative American society than was proffered by the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny. Their legacy is that while environmental and social justice has been slow in fulfilment, their continued popularity testifies to the fact that the struggle for justice has never been ceded.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367140434
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/17/2019
Series:	Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kyhl D. Lyndgaard is Director of First Year Seminar and Writing Centers at St. John's University, Collegeville, MN, USA.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Taking off the Moccasin Flower and Putting on the Lady's Slipper: Indian Removal and the Natural Environment in the Nineteenth Century

Chapter 1: Redemption Deferred: American Captivity Narratives as Environmental Literature

Chapter 2: The Great Slide: Mary Jemison's Ruptured Narrative

Chapter 3: Scientific and Sympathetic Collaboration: Edwin James and John Tanner

Chapter 4: All Along the Watch Tower: Life of Black Hawk as a Counter Captivity Narrative

Chapter 5: Communitist Narratives of Exile and Restoration