Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1995. Print.
Chapters read:
- “Introduction”
- “Pastoral Ideology”
- “New World Dreams and Environmental Actualities”
- “Representing the Environment”
In the introduction, Buell outlines three broad topics his book, The Environmental Imagination, will cover: environmental perception, the place of nature in the history of Western thought, and the consequences of imagining a more “ecocentric” way of being (1). While we’re not reading the entire book, the sections that we’ve selected did an excellent job of covering a little bit of each of these three topics. Rather than go through the chapters point by point, I’ll be pulling out the highlights that grabbed my attention.
Buell speaks about “environmental double-think” in America, illustrating the ways in which Americans and our culture is both nature-loving and resource-consuming at the same time (4). We are able to enact these two contrasting ways of life because we compartmentalize our actions. I’m sure each of us could provide examples of this environmental double-think from our own personal lives. For example, my washer and dryer is certified energy efficient, but I’ll toss something in the dryer for 5 minutes to de-wrinkle instead of ironing it, which would be way more energy efficient.
What I loved about Buell’s book is the historical aspect; Buell provides a history of American literature in order to expose and explain the relationships that have been built between literature, theory, genre, and the environment. The construction of American literature has actually occurred three times, something that to be honest, I had given very little thought about. Buell describes the three constructions as follows: constructed in the image of old world desire, reconstructed in the image of American cultural nationalism, and finally, reconstructed in the image of American exceptionalism (5-6). The idea of, and construction of American literature did not happen in a vacuum, and we must take into account influences from Europe.
Buell provides four criteria of an environmental text, describing it as a “rough” check list. I’m including it here because I think it will be an invaluable tool for Blake and I throughout this course in identifying appropriate primary texts.
- The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.
- The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest.
- Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation.
- Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text.
As you can see, the list is rather short and it also illustrates, as Buell points out, how inclusive or exclusive the idea of “environmental” as a category can be. It would be a mistake to say that all of an author’s works automatically fall within the category of environmental text—instead, scholars must look at an author’s works one by one and decide on an individual basis whether or not it meets enough of the above criteria.
