Clear-cutting Eden
Subtitle: ecology and the pastoral in Southern literature
By: Christopher Rieger.
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Tuscaloosa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
ISBN-13: 9780817316419; 9780817381240
Subjects: Caldwell, Erskine, -- 1903-1987 -- Criticism and interpretation; Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan, -- 1896-1953 -- Criticism and interpretation; Hurston, Zora Neale -- Criticism and interpretation; Faulkner, William, -- 1897-1962 -- Criticism and interpretation; American fiction -- Southern States -- History and criticism; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century; Human ecology in literature; Nature in literature; Pastoral fiction, American -- History and criticism
Description: "Clear-Cutting Eden examines how Southern literary depictions of the natural world were influenced by the historical, social, and ecological changes of the 1930s and 1940s." "Christopher Rieger studies the ways that nature is conceived of and portrayed by four prominent Southern writers of the era: Erskine Caldwell, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Faulkner. Specifically, he argues that these writers created new versions of an old literary mode - the pastoral - in response to the destabilizing effects of the Great Depression, the rise of Southern modernism, and the mechanization of agricultural jobs." "Mass deforestation, soil erosion, urban development, and depleted soil fertility are issues that come to the fore in the works of these writers. In response, each author depicts a network model of nature, where humans are part of the natural world, rather than separate, over, or above it, as in the garden pastorals of the Old South, thus significantly revising the pastoral mode proffered by antebellum and Reconstruction-era writers." "Each writer, Rieger finds, infuses the pastoral mode with continuing relevance, creating new versions that fit his or her ideological positions on issues of race, class, and gender. Despite the ways these authors represent nature and humankind's place in it, they all illustrate the idea that the natural environment is more than just a passive background against which the substance of life, or fiction, is played out."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Changes in the air and on the ground: nature, the Great Depression, and southern pastoral; title: Depleted land, depleted lives: Erskine Caldwell's antipastoral; title: Cross creek culture: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's wilderness pastoral; title: Connecting inner and outer nature: Zora Neale Hurston's personal pastoral; title: The postpastoral of William Faulkner's Go down, Moses; title: Ecopastoral and the past, present, and future of Southern literature.