A terrible beauty
Subtitle: the wilderness of American literature
By: Jonah Raskin
Publisher: Regent Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Berkeley, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 366
ISBN-13: 9781587902789
Subjects: Wilderness areas in literature; History and criticism; American literature; Environmentalism in literature; Wilderness areas
Description: Shortly before he published Walden; or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau called "The library a wilderness of books." He also noted that while Americans were "clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses." In A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature, Jonah Raskin takes a long close look at the forest of books that poets, novelists and essayists mapped and explored before and after Thoreau. The first work of cultural criticism to look back at writing in the United States from the perspective of the contemporary environmental crisis, Raskin offers insights for students, teachers and lovers of literature as well as for backpackers and hikers who have trekked across untrammeled forests, deserts and mountains.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Ah, wilderness; title: Explorers & colonists: Sebastian Cabot, Henry Hudson, Robert Juet & William Bradford; title: Puritans: Roger Williams, Mary Rowlandson, Cotton Mather & William Faulkner; title: Revolutionaries: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, J. Hector Crevecoueur, Philip Freneau & Washington Irving; title: Continental: Meriwether Lewis, William Clark & Sacagawea; title: Pioneers: James Fenimore Cooper's wild literary ride; title: Pale faces & redskins: Robert Baird, Catharine Sedgwick & Ly6dia Maria Child; title: Radicals: Margaret Fuller & Henry David Thoreau; title: Allegorical: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville & John Muir; title: Coquette: Emily Dickinson; title: Satirical: Mark Twain; title: Twentieth century & beyond: Jack London, Mary Austin, Willa Cather & F. Scott Fitzgerald.