Details

Subject(s)

• American literature—19th century—History and criticism [Browse]
• Biogeography—United States—History—19th century [Browse]
• Human ecology in literature [Browse]
• Fragmentation (Philosophy) in literature [Browse]
• Ecocriticism [Browse]
• Environmentalism in literature [Browse]

Series

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture [More in this series]

Summary note

Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Discourse of Natural History illuminates how literary experimentation with natural history provides penumbral views of environmental survival. The book brings together feminist revisions of scientific objectivity and critical race theory on diaspora to show how biogeography influenced material and metaphorical concepts of species and race. It also highlights how lesser known writers of color like Simon Pokagon and James McCune Smith connected species migration and mutability to forms of racial uplift. The book situates these literary visions of environmental fragility and survival amidst the development of Darwinian theories of evolution and against a westward expanding American settler colonialism.

Notes

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 24 Nov 2021).

ISBN

9781108990660 (ebook)

Statement on language in description

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