nature in the contemporary american novel
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Nature in the Contemporary American Novel. Patrick D. Murphy University of Central Florida. 1960s and 1970s. Nature Writing as American Starting Point. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Nature in the Contemporary American NovelPatrick D. MurphyUniversity of Central Florida
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1960s and 1970s
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Nature Writing as American Starting
Point• Nature Writing was being defined by its teachers
as a type of nonfictional prose focused on "natural history and experiences in nature" –Thomas J. Lyon
• Even as professors and critics were achieving success in teaching these new courses, they were finding themselves unable to limit their selection of texts to "nonfiction" and to portraits of direct "experience."
• Nature writing takes the emphasis away from history and geology and places it squarely on the impact of nature on human individuals and human societies, and, in turn, their impact on nature.
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The Two JohnsJohn Muir
John Burroughs
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James Fenimore CooperThe
Deerslayer The Last of the Mohicans
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Fictional Nature LiteratureHerman
MelvilleSara Orne
Jewett
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Mary AustinThe Land of Little Rain The Ford
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“Environmental” literature
• presumes a high degree of self-consciousness about ecological relationships and environmental crises. While examples of environmental literature can be found at any point in time when writers have become concerned about the negative impact of their culture or nation on the natural world they inhabit, it is much more of a contemporary phenomenon than nature literature because of the widespread recognition of global environmental crises.
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American FeminismAbigail Adams Sencea Falls 1848
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Women Writers• Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours, for example, was a national bestseller.
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Other 19th Century Women Writers
•Helen Hunt Jackson•Rebecca Harding Davis•Mary Hallock Foote•Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Again in the 1960s
• In the U.S. the third wave of feminism arose alongside of, and as a part of, the Civil Rights movement and later the anti-war movement, and developed ahead of but largely separate from environmentalism.
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Ecofeminismecofeminism is more focused on the future. Unlike what are known as liberal feminists, ecofeminists do not want women to have equality of opportunity to destroy species of animals, to pollute the atmosphere, or to contribute to global warming. Rather, they believe that alleviating women’s oppression is part of a larger project of transforming human relationships with the rest of nature.
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Focus on the Future
The ecofeminist focus on the future is predicated upon the belief in human agency such that we can act in the world and effect cultural, political, and economic changes. Such changes will in turn open up a different set of possibilities for ways of living in the future than are currently available in the configurations of global capitalism, homogenizing industrialization, and metropolitan cultural oppression of colonial and formerly colonial countries and indigenous peoples.
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Extension of Agency• Usually, when humans ask "what good is it," they
really mean "what good is it to me or to my society?"
• Ecocriticism and ecofeminism point out that the questions need to be framed as "what good is it within its ecosystem, and what is the relationship of humans to the maintenance or degradation of that good within that system?"
• Using the health of the ecosystem as the fundamental criterion for judgment enables the recognition of diversity as a necessary dimension of individual species and ecosystem survival, with cultural diversity as one of the dimensions that enhances the survival of the human species.
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Ethnic American Novelists
Scott MomadayLeslie Marmon Silko
Linda Hogan Ana Castillo
Alice WalkerLouis Owens
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Various Senses of Nature and Place
Attention to the multicultural and multiethnic dimensions of nature writing and environmental literature is one way of expanding our understanding of literary representations of human-nature interaction. That will help readers and critics to understand the ways in which different segments of the American population articulate their sense of place, of inhabitation, and of identification with the world around them.
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Contemporary Novels 1970 to
Presentone) historical and realist novels
two) postmodern and magic realist novels
three) mystery and detective novels
four) science fiction and fantasy novels.
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Historical Novels• Marly Youmans's Catherwood, set in
the colonial period, • William Haywood Henderson's post-
Civil War novel, The Rest of the Earth, • Brenda Peterson's Depression era
River of Light, • Linda Hogan's Mean Spirit about
Native Americans during the Oklahoma oil boom of the 1920s, and
• frontier novels by such authors as Molly Gloss, The Jump-off Creek
• And Susan Lang, Small Rocks Rising
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Key Issues with Historical Novels
One, are they based in nostalgia and romantically recreate the period to serve eutopian ideals
Two, do they attempt to rewrite official or popular history to assess more accurately contradictory characteristics of human-environment interactions
Three, do they share similar thematic impulses and emphases or employ different environmental and ethical positions.
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Realist NovelsWendell Berry's The Memory of Old Jack, A Place on Earth, and Remembering
Frank Bergon's Wild GameStephen Goodwin's The Blood of Paradise
Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer and Animal Dreams
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Ruth Ozeki's My Year of MeatsAgribusinessCarcinogensMutagenic syntheticsFoodchain implicates everyone in Environmental health
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Postmodern and Magic Realist • Karen Tei Yamashita's, Through the Arc of the Rainforest and Tropic of Orange, • Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, • Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, • John Nichols's The Milagro Beanfield War, • Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, • Toni Morrison's Paradise
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Linda Hogan, Solar Storms
Environmental justice
Destruction of CanadianFirst Nation lands
HydroQuebecJames Bay Project
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Mysteries• Nevada Barr's name has become synonymous
with adventures in national parks • John Straley the setting is Alaska, both urban
and wild• John D. MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen it is
Florida• Jane Langton New England towns• Judith Van Gieson, the Southwest• Writers associated with cities who treat
environmental topics include Sara Paretsky with Chicago and Barbara Neely with Boston.
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Florida Favorites
•John D. MacDonald
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Carl Hiaasen
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Science FictionAnti-technological
• Jean HeglandCautionary Tale
• Arthur Herzog
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De-homocentric OrientationMolly Gloss, The Dazzle of Day Quakers and Whitman
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Biology and Other Sentient Beings
• Joan Slonczewski
•Biology Professor •Kenyon College
• The Children Star
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Thank You!