The Environmental Imagination

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Release : 1996-09-01
Genre : Literary Criticism
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Book Rating : 433/5 ( reviews)

The Environmental Imagination - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Environmental Imagination write by Lawrence Buell. This book was released on 1996-09-01. The Environmental Imagination available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. With the environmental crisis comes a crisis of the imagination, a need to find new ways to understand nature and humanity's relation to it. This is the challenge Lawrence Buell takes up in The Environmental Imagination, the most ambitious study to date of how literature represents the natural environment. With Thoreau's Walden as a touchstone, Buell gives us a far-reaching account of environmental perception, the place of nature in the history of western thought, and the consequences for literary scholarship of attempting to imagine a more "ecocentric" way of being. In doing so, he provides a major new understanding of Thoreau's achievement and, at the same time, a profound rethinking of our literary and cultural reflections on nature. The green tradition in American writing commands Buell's special attention, particularly environmental nonfiction from colonial times to the present. In works by writers from Crevecoeur to Wendell Berry, John Muir to Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson to Leslie Silko, Mary Austin to Edward Abbey, he examines enduring environmental themes such as the dream of relinquishment, the personification of the nonhuman, an attentiveness to environmental cycles, a devotion to place, and a prophetic awareness of possible ecocatastrophe. At the center of this study we find an image of Walden as a quest for greater environmental awareness, an impetus and guide for Buell as he develops a new vision of environmental writing and seeks a new way of conceiving the relation between human imagination and environmental actuality in the age of industrialization. Intricate and challenging in its arguments, yet engagingly and elegantly written, The Environmental Imagination is a major work of scholarship, one that establishes a new basis for reading American nature writing.

Sense of Place and Sense of Planet

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Release : 2008-09-29
Genre : Literary Criticism
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Book Rating : 800/5 ( reviews)

Sense of Place and Sense of Planet - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Sense of Place and Sense of Planet write by Ursula K. Heise. This book was released on 2008-09-29. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet analyzes the relationship between the imagination of the global and the ethical commitment to the local in environmentalist thought and writing from the 1960s to the present. Part One critically examines the emphasis on local identities and communities in North American environmentalism by establishing conceptual connections between environmentalism and ecocriticism, on one hand, and theories of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, on the other. It proposes the concept of "eco-cosmopolitanism" as a shorthand for envisioning these connections and the cultural and aesthetic forms into which they translate. Part Two focuses on conceptualizations of environmental danger and connects environmentalist and ecocritical thought with the interdisciplinary field of risk theory in the social sciences, arguing that environmental justice theory and ecocriticism stand to benefit from closer consideration of the theories of cosmopolitanism that have arisen in this field from the analysis of transnational communities at risk. Both parts of the book combine in-depth theoretical discussion with detailed analyses of novels, poems, films, computer software and installation artworks from the US and abroad that translate new connections between global, national and local forms of awareness into innovative aesthetic forms combining allegory, epic, and views of the planet as a whole with modernist and postmodernist strategies of fragmentation, montage, collage, and zooming.

The Environmental Imagination

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Author :
Release : 2008
Genre : Architecture
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Book Rating : 862/5 ( reviews)

The Environmental Imagination - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Environmental Imagination write by Dean Hawkes. This book was released on 2008. The Environmental Imagination available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume presents a chronologically ordered and detailed account of the developing relationship between technics and poetics in environmental design in architecture through a consideration of the work of major names in the field.

Natural States

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Release : 2010-09-30
Genre : Nature
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Book Rating : 584/5 ( reviews)

Natural States - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Natural States write by Richard W. Judd. This book was released on 2010-09-30. Natural States available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Richard Judd and Christopher Beach define the environmental imagination as the attempt to secure 'a sense of freedom, permanence, and authenticity through communion with nature.' The desire for this connection is based on ideals about nature, wilderness, and the livable landscape that are personal, variable, and often contradictory. Judd and Beach are interested in the public expression of these ideals in post-World War II environmental politics. Arguing that the best way to study the relationship between popular values and politics is through local and regional records, they focus on Maine and Oregon, states both rich in natural beauty and environmentalist traditions, but distinct in their postwar economic growth. Natural States reconstructs the environmental imagination from public commentary, legislative records, and other documents. Judd and Beach trace important divisions within the environmental movement, noting that they were balanced by a consistent, civic-minded vision of environmental goods shared by all. They demonstrate how tensions from competing ideals sustained the movement, contributed to its successes, but also limited its achievements. In the process, they offer insight into the character of the broader environmental movement as it emerged from the interplay of local, state, and national politics. The study ends in the 1970s when spectacular legislative achievements at the national level were masking a decline in mainstream civic engagement in state politics. The authors note the rise of the private ecotopia and the increasing complexity in the way Americans viewed their connections with the natural world. Yet, today, despite wide variations in beliefs and lifestyles, a majority of Americans still consider themselves to be environmentalists. In Natural States, environmental politics emerges less as a conflict between people who do and do not value nature, and more as a debate about the way people define and then chose to live with nature. In their attempt to place the passion for nature within a changing political and cultural context, Judd and Beach shed light on the ways that ideals unify and divide the environmental movement and act as the source of its enduring popularity.

The Future of Environmental Criticism

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Release : 2009-02-09
Genre : Literary Criticism
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Book Rating : 978/5 ( reviews)

The Future of Environmental Criticism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Future of Environmental Criticism write by Lawrence Buell. This book was released on 2009-02-09. The Future of Environmental Criticism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Written by one of the world’s leading theorists in ecocriticism, this manifesto provides a critical summary of the ecocritical movement. A critical summary of the emerging discipline of “ecocriticism”. Written by one of the world’s leading theorists in ecocriticism. Traces the history of the ecocritical movement from its roots in the 1970s through to its diversification and proliferation today. Takes account of different ecocritical positions and directions. Describes major tensions within ecocriticism and addresses major criticisms of the movement. Looks to the future of ecocriticism, proposing that discourses of the environment should become a permanent part of literary and cultural studies.