Imagining Wild AmericaUniversity of Michigan Press, 2009 M04 3 - 236 pages At a time when the idea of wilderness is being challenged by both politicians and intellectuals, Imagining Wild America examines writing about wilderness and wildness and makes a case for its continuing value. The book focuses on works by John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, and Mary Oliver, as each writer illustrates different stages and dimensions of the American fascination with wild nature. John Knott traces the emergence of a visionary tradition that embraces values consciously understood to be ahistorical, showing that these writers, while recognizing the claims of history and the interdependence of nature and culture, also understand and attempt to represent wild nature as something different, other. A contribution to the growing literature of eco-criticism, the book is a response to and critique of recent arguments about the constructed nature of wilderness. Imagining Wild America demonstrates the richness and continuing importance of the idea of wilderness, and its attraction for American writers. John R. Knott is Professor of English, University of Michigan. His previous books include The Huron River: Voices from the Watershed, coedited with Keith Taylor. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 17 | |
2 Henry David Thoreau and Wildness | 49 |
John Muirs Sierra | 83 |
4 Edward Abbey and the Romance of Wilderness | 111 |
5 Into the Woods with Wendell Berry | 133 |
6 Mary Olivers Wild World | 163 |
Conclusion | 189 |
Notes | 199 |
Index | 225 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abbey's Aldo Leopold American Primitive appeal associated awareness beauty become Berry's birds celebration civilization cultural dark death Desert Solitaire divine domestic Douglas squirrel earth ecocriticism Edward Abbey episode essay Excursions experience fields finds forest Gary Snyder grass habits Henry David Thoreau Huckleberries human presence ideal Imagining Wild America Indian John James Audubon John Muir John Tallmadge kind land landscape Lawrence Buell light living Long-Legged House Maine Woods Mary Oliver Mary Oliver's meadows Mountains of California Muir's mystery natural world nature's ness Notes to Pages observed offers Ornithological Biography pine poem poetry presents preservation prose Pursuit of Wildness readers recognizes reflects revealing river rock romantic scene seems sense shooting Sierra silence song spiritual suggests Summer swamp Thoreau and Wildness Timbered Choir tion trees University Press vision Walden Walking Wendell Berry wild nature Wild World Wilderness as Energy Woods with Wendell York Yosemite