Johnson, Rochelle and Daniel Patterson. “Introduction.” Essays on Nature and Landscape. By Susan Fenimore Cooper. Eds. Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002. xiii-xxxii. Print.
Susan Fenimore Cooper’s literary career spanned fifty years, covering a wide range of genres; however, most of her works represent the genre of nature writing, the most famous being Rural Hours (published in 1850). Two repeating themes occur in her works: “the idealization of American rural life and advocacy for an environmentally sustainable human society” (xiii). Cooper’s environmental philosophy and theory of nature writing are developed and matured throughout her fifty year-long writing career. In Cooper’s only essay on landscape aesthetics, “the ecological health of the land” sustains a comfortable balance between the physical environment and human presence (xiv). The rural nature writer’s value shifts during Cooper’s lifetime, and she claims “American intellectuals or artists” can better wield influence from rural settings rather than cities (xvii). Cooper believed nature cannot be properly represented until the artist combines their knowledge with a Christian faith. “Ostego Leaves” is published twenty-eight years after Rural Hours, and Cooper refers back to her original book as a source of environmental history; the book also functions as literary ornithology, charting the “continued decline of her region’s bird populations” (xxvii). Despite the fact that Cooper becomes known as an amateur ornithologist, she denies having “scientific expertise,” preferring instead to operate within the “blurred boundary” between literary works and works of science (xxviii).
No comments:
Post a Comment