University of Iowa Press, 2010 eISBN: 978-1-58729-939-1 | Paper: 978-1-58729-907-0 Library of Congress Classification PS274.C45 2010 Dewey Decimal Classification 813.0093278
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
At the core of this nuanced book is the question that ecocritics have been debating for decades: what is the relationship between aesthetics and activism, between art and community? By using a pastoral lens to examine ten fictional narratives that chronicle the dialogue between human culture and nonhuman nature on the Great Plains, Matthew Cella explores literary treatments of a succession of abrupt cultural transitions from the Euroamerican conquest of the “Indian wilderness” in the nineteenth century to the Buffalo Commons phenomenon in the twentieth. By charting the shifting meaning of land use and biocultural change in the region, he posits this bad land—the arid West—as a crucible for the development of the human imagination.
Each chapter deals closely with two novels that chronicle the same crisis within the Plains community. Cella highlights, for example, how Willa Cather reconciles her persistent romanticism with a growing disillusionment about the future of rural Nebraska, how Tillie Olsen and Frederick Manfred approach the tragedy of the Dust Bowl with strikingly similar visions, and how Annie Proulx and Thomas King use the return of the buffalo as the centerpiece of a revised mythology of the Plains as a palimpsest defined by layers of change and response. By illuminating these fictional quests for wholeness on the Great Plains, Cella leads us to understand the intricate interdependency of people and the places they inhabit.
Cella uses the term “pastoralism” in its broadest sense to mean a mode of thinking that probes the relationship between nature and culture: a discourse concerned with human engagement—material and nonmaterial—with the nonhuman community. In all ten novels discussed in this book, pastoral experience—the encounter with the Beautiful—leads to a renewed understanding of the integral connection between human and nonhuman communities. Propelling this tradition of bad land pastoralism are an underlying faith in the beauty of wholeness that comes from inhabiting a continuously changing biocultural landscape and a recognition of the inevitability of change. The power of story and language to shape the direction of that change gives literary pastoralism the potential to support an alternative series of ideals based not on escape but on stewardship: community, continuity, and commitment.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Matthew Cella is a visiting assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He has been both managing editor and book review editor for MELUS, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
REVIEWS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword by Wayne Franklin
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Biocultural Change and Literary Pastoralism in Great Plains Fiction
1. (Un)settling the Indian Wilderness: Tribal Pastoralism in Cooper’s The Prairie and Welch’s Fools Crow
2. Pastoralism and Enclosure: Marriage and Illegitimate Children on the Range-FarmFrontierin Eaton’s Cattle and Richter’s Sea of Grass
3. Harmonious Fields and Wild Prairies: Transcendental Pastoralism in Willa Cather’s Nebraska Novels
4. Patches of Green and Fields of Dust: Dust Bowl Pastoralism in Olsen’s Yonnondio and Manfred’sThe Golden Bowl
5. Healing the Wounds of History: Buffalo Commons Pastoralism in Proulx’s That Old Ace in the Holeand King’s Truth and Bright Water
Epilogue: Pastoral Art and the Beautiful
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Iowa Press, 2010 eISBN: 978-1-58729-939-1 Paper: 978-1-58729-907-0
At the core of this nuanced book is the question that ecocritics have been debating for decades: what is the relationship between aesthetics and activism, between art and community? By using a pastoral lens to examine ten fictional narratives that chronicle the dialogue between human culture and nonhuman nature on the Great Plains, Matthew Cella explores literary treatments of a succession of abrupt cultural transitions from the Euroamerican conquest of the “Indian wilderness” in the nineteenth century to the Buffalo Commons phenomenon in the twentieth. By charting the shifting meaning of land use and biocultural change in the region, he posits this bad land—the arid West—as a crucible for the development of the human imagination.
Each chapter deals closely with two novels that chronicle the same crisis within the Plains community. Cella highlights, for example, how Willa Cather reconciles her persistent romanticism with a growing disillusionment about the future of rural Nebraska, how Tillie Olsen and Frederick Manfred approach the tragedy of the Dust Bowl with strikingly similar visions, and how Annie Proulx and Thomas King use the return of the buffalo as the centerpiece of a revised mythology of the Plains as a palimpsest defined by layers of change and response. By illuminating these fictional quests for wholeness on the Great Plains, Cella leads us to understand the intricate interdependency of people and the places they inhabit.
Cella uses the term “pastoralism” in its broadest sense to mean a mode of thinking that probes the relationship between nature and culture: a discourse concerned with human engagement—material and nonmaterial—with the nonhuman community. In all ten novels discussed in this book, pastoral experience—the encounter with the Beautiful—leads to a renewed understanding of the integral connection between human and nonhuman communities. Propelling this tradition of bad land pastoralism are an underlying faith in the beauty of wholeness that comes from inhabiting a continuously changing biocultural landscape and a recognition of the inevitability of change. The power of story and language to shape the direction of that change gives literary pastoralism the potential to support an alternative series of ideals based not on escape but on stewardship: community, continuity, and commitment.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Matthew Cella is a visiting assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He has been both managing editor and book review editor for MELUS, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
REVIEWS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword by Wayne Franklin
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Biocultural Change and Literary Pastoralism in Great Plains Fiction
1. (Un)settling the Indian Wilderness: Tribal Pastoralism in Cooper’s The Prairie and Welch’s Fools Crow
2. Pastoralism and Enclosure: Marriage and Illegitimate Children on the Range-FarmFrontierin Eaton’s Cattle and Richter’s Sea of Grass
3. Harmonious Fields and Wild Prairies: Transcendental Pastoralism in Willa Cather’s Nebraska Novels
4. Patches of Green and Fields of Dust: Dust Bowl Pastoralism in Olsen’s Yonnondio and Manfred’sThe Golden Bowl
5. Healing the Wounds of History: Buffalo Commons Pastoralism in Proulx’s That Old Ace in the Holeand King’s Truth and Bright Water
Epilogue: Pastoral Art and the Beautiful
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE