AMERICAN GEORGICS [Hardcover]

In classical terms the georgic celebrates the working landscape, cultivated to become fruitful and prosperous, in contrast to the idealized or fanciful landscapes of the pastoral. Arguing that economic considerations must become central to any understanding of the human community's engagement with the natural environment, Timothy Sweet identifies a distinct literary mode he calls the American georgic.

Offering a fresh approach to ecocritical and environmentally-oriented literary studies, Sweet traces the history of the American georgic from its origins in late sixteenth-century English literature promoting the colonization of the Americas through the mid-nineteenth century, ending with George Perkins Marsh'sMan and Nature(1864), the foundational text in the conservationist movement.

Introduction

1. Economy and Environment in Sixteenth-Century Promotional Literature
2. God Sells Us All Things for Our Labour : John Smith's Generall Historie
3. Wonder-Working Providence of the Market
4. Admirable Oeconomy : Robert Beverley's Calculus of Compensation
5. Ideologies of Farming: Crevecoeur, Jefferson, Rush, and Brown
6. Cherokee Improvements and the Removal Debate
7. Co-Workers with Nature : Cooper, Thoreau, and Marsh

Notes
Woks Cited
Index
Acknowledgments

Thoughtful, critically intelligent, and well-informed. —Lawrence Buell, Harvard University

American Georgicstakes as its primary problem the question of the human place in nature. By extending our understanding of what counts as environmental literature back before Thoreau, Sweet shows that early texts, while not necessarily green in contemporary terms, can offer important insights into our relationship to the environment.

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