Dark Eden: The Swamp in Nineteenth-Century American CultureCambridge University Press, 1989 - 323 pages An important though little understood aspect of the response to nature of nineteenth-century Americans is the widespread interest in the scenery of swamps, jungles and other waste lands. Dark Eden focuses on this developing interest in order to redefine cultural values during a transformative period of American history. Professor Miller shows how, for many Americans in the period around the Civil War, nature came to be regarded less as a source of high moral insight and more as a sanctuary from an ever more urbanized and technological environment. In the swamps and jungles of the South a whole range of writers found a set of strange and exotic images by which to explore the changing social realities of the times and the deep-seated personal pressures that accompanied them. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Matrix of Transformation | 21 |
The MidVictorian Response | 47 |
Chapter Three MidVictorian Cultural Values and the Amoral | 77 |
The Phenomenology of Disintegration | 105 |
Chapter Five The Penetration of the Jungle | 118 |
Chapter Six American Nature Writing in the MidVictorian | 125 |
The Cultural Inheritance | 132 |
The Challenge of the Image | 184 |
Emerson and Thoreau | 207 |
Martin | 224 |
Sidney Lanier | 241 |
Katherine Anne Porters Jungle and the Modernist | 255 |
Wading in a Marsh by David Wagoner | 269 |
| 313 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic American culture artists associationism associations atmosphere beauty Boston Byrd Civil Confidence-Man context contrast cypress dark David Hunter Strother death Dismal Swamp Dred Emerson experience exploration faith feeling Figure Florida forest Frederic Church Frederick Goddard Tuckerman Harper's Heade's Hearn Henry Higginson human Ibid idea ideal imagery imagination immersion infection influence John John Ruskin jungle Lafcadio Hearn Lake Drummond language light marsh Martin Johnson Heade meaning Melville metaphor mind mode moral mountain mysterious narrative nature nineteenth century novel object Painters painting perspective picturesque poem poet poetry Porte's primitive psychological reality reflected relationship religious represents Romantic Ruskin scene scenery sense sensibility sentimental Sidney Lanier Simms Simms's slave social South Southern spirit Stowe Stowe's sublime symbolic Thomas Thomas Cole Thoreau thought traditional transformation trees tropical Tuckerman unconscious University Press vegetation vision visual wild wilderness William William Gilmore Simms William Trost Richards words writers York