Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel
- ISBN-10
- 1000367614
- ISBN-13
- 9781000367614
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 272
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-03-29
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Author
- Anna Burton
Description
This is a book about a longstanding network of writers and writings that celebrate the aesthetic, socio-political, scientific, ecological, geographical, and historical value of trees and tree spaces in the landscape; and it is a study of the effect of this tree-writing upon the novel form in the long nineteenth century. Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel identifies the picturesque thinker William Gilpin as a significant influence in this literary and environmental tradition. Remarks on Forest Scenery (1791) is formed by Gilpin’s own observations of trees, forests, and his New Forest home specifically; but it is also the product of tree-stories collected from ‘travellers and historians’ that came before him. This study tracks the impact of this accumulating arboreal discourse upon nineteenth-century environmental writers such as John Claudius Loudon, Jacob George Strutt, William Howitt, and Mary Roberts, and its influence on varied dialogues surrounding natural history, agriculture, landscaping, deforestation, and public health. Building upon this concept of an ongoing silvicultural discussion, the monograph examines how novelists in the realist mode engage with this discourse and use their understanding of arboreal space and its cultural worth in order to transform their own fictional environments. Through their novelistic framing of single trees, clumps, forests, ancient woodlands, and man-made plantations, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Thomas Hardy feature as authors of particular interest. Collectively, in their environmental representations, these novelists engage with a broad range of silvicultural conversation in their writing of space at the beginning, middle, and end of the nineteenth century. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and academics working in the environmental humanities, long nineteenth-century literature, nature writing and environmental literature, environmental history, ecocriticism, and literature and science scholarship.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2021-03-29
- 218 pages
- Ebook
- Routledge
Similar books
-
Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Global Nineteenth Century
By Elizabeth Hope Chang... Sergeant Aldophus “Dolly” Williamson, who worked on the Constance Kent murder case in 1860 and was promoted to be Chief Inspector of the detective force by 1865;14 a periodical profile describes Williamson as a “quiet, unpretending, ...
-
Anticipatory Materialisms in Literature and Philosophy, 1790–1930
By Jo Carruthers, Nour Dakkak, Rebecca SpenceThis collection stakes a different claim: by engaging with neglected theories of materiality in literary and philosophical works that antedate the twenty-first century ‘turn’ to New Materialism and theories of affect, the project aims ...
-
Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History
By Franco MorettiA manifesto for a text-free literary scholarship.
-
The Tree of Heaven: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition
By May SinclairThe Tree of Heaven: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition
-
Motives in English Fiction
By Robert Naylor Whiteford"The material presents is not only a history of English fiction, but a view of its variations in atmosphere, motivation, dialogue, and characterization." -- Preface.
-
Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Discourse of Natural History
By Juliana ChowSee also John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000). 29. Marsh's work follows in the tradition of physical geographers such as Alexander von Humboldt, whose Cosmos (1845, 1847; ...
-
THE TREES
By Conrad RichterHere is the true American epic. Here is the raw adventure, swift and cruel in its episodes; but here too is the poetry of loneliness. Here is a portrait of frontier life as it really must have seemed to the pioneers.
-
The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 3: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880
By Patrick Parrinder, John Kucich, Jenny Bourne TaylorThis series presents a comprehensive, global and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written ... by a international team of scholars ... -- dust jacket.
-
Old Growth: The Best Writing about Trees from Orion Magazine
By Robin Wall KimmererArticles about trees that have appeared in Orion Magazine.
-
The Trumpet of Reform: German Literature in Nineteenth-century New England
By Sigrid BauschingerThe influence of German literature and philosophy on American intellectuals in 19th-century New England.