The Midwestern Pastoral

Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland

William Barillas

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2006
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780821442012
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The midwestern pastoral is a literary tradition of place and rural experience that celebrates an attachment to land that is mystical as well as practical, based on historical and scientific knowledge as well as personal experience. It is exemplified in the poetry, fiction, and essays of writers who express an informed love of the nature and regional landscapes of the Midwest.

Drawing on recent studies in cultural geography, environmental history, and mythology, as well as literary criticism, The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland relates Midwestern pastoral writers to their local geographies and explains their approaches. William Barillas treats five important Midwestern pastoralists—Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and Jim Harrison—in separate chapters. He also discusses Jane Smiley, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Paul Gruchow, and others.

For these writers, the aim of writing is not merely intellectual and aesthetic, but democratic and ecological. In depicting and promoting commitment to local communities, human and natural, they express their love for, their understanding of, and their sense of place in the American Midwest. Students and serious readers, as well as scholars in the growing field of literature and the environment, will appreciate this study of writers who counter alienation and materialism in modern society.

Index

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

“Abandoned Farmhouse” (Kooser)

Abbey, Edward

Above the River (Wright)

Acocella, Joan

Age of Reform, The (Hofstadter)

Alexander’s Bridge

allemansrättan

Allen, Tim

Almanac of the Dead (Silko)

American Gothic (Grant Wood)

“American Scholar, The” (Emerson)

Anderson, Sherwood

Andrist, Ralph K.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

Appleseed, Johnny (John Chapman)

“Arriving in the Country Again” (Wright)

“As I Step over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor” (Wright)

Atherton, Lewis

“At the Executed Murderer’s Grave” (Wright)

Auden, W. H.

“Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” (Wright)

Babbitt (Lewis)

Babbitt (character and archetype)

Bachelard, Gaston

Baker, Bruce P.

“Bat, The” (Roethke)

Battle of Bad Axe

Beast God Forgot to Invent, The (Harrison)

“Beginning” (Wright)

“Beige Dolorosa, The” (Harrison)

Bellah, Robert

Bellow, Saul

Belt, Don

Benton, Thomas Hart

Beowulf

Bergere (Leopold), Estelle

Berry, Wendell

“Best Years, The” (Cather)

“Big Two-Hearted River” (Hemingway)

“Big Wind” (Roethke)

Black Elk

Black Hawk

Black Hawk: An Autobiography

Black Hawk War

Blake, William

“Blessing, A” (Wright)

Bly, Carol

Bly, Robert

Boehme, Jacob

booster (archetype)

Boundary Waters (Gruchow)

Braided Creek (Harrison and Kooser)

Branch Will Not Break, The (Wright)

passim

Brokaw, Tom

Bromfield, Louis

Brummels, J.V.

Bryan, William Jennings

Bryant, William Cullen

Buell, Lawrence

Bunyan, Paul, (chap. ) Burke, Kenneth

Burroughs, John

Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez (97)

Cahokia

Callaway, Kathy

Callicott, J. Baird

Campbell, Joseph

Campion, Dan

Cary, Alice

Cass, Lewis

“Casting Reels” (Kooser)

Cather, Willa

passim

passim

passim; Alexander’s Bridge; “Best Years, The”; childhood of; Death Comes for the Archbishop; and ecology; “Enchanted Bluff, The” “Escapism” Lost Lady, A;

My Ántonia; My Mortal Enemy; and naturalism; “Nebraska” “Neighbor Rosicky” “Novel Démeublé, The” “Old Mrs. Harris” One of Ours; “On the Divide” O Pioneers!; Professor’s House, The; and revisionist critics; Sapphira and the Slave Girl; “Sculptor’s Funeral, The” and sexuality; Shadows on the Rock; Song of the Lark, The; “Wagner Matinée, A”

Catton, Bruce

Cayton, Andrew R. L.

“Centenary Ode, A” (Wright), Ceremony (Silko)

Cézanne, Paul

Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed)

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Chief Joseph

“Childhood Sketch” (Wright)

Christianity

Clare, John

Clark, George Rogers

Clark, William

Clemens, Samuel

Clements, Frederic

Cleveland, Horace

“Communitarian Platform, The”

“Conservation” (Leopold)

“Conservation Esthetic” (Leopold)

Cooley, John

Cooper, James Fenimore

“Country” (Leopold)

Country of the Pointed Firs, The ( Jewett)

Cowles, Henry C.

Crane, Hart

Crazy Horse

Crèvecoeur, Hector St. Jean de

“Criticism of the Booster Spirit, A” (Leopold)

Cronon, William

Curry, John Steuart

“Cuttings” (Roethke)

“Cuttings (later)” (Roethke)

Dalva (Harrison)

Daniels, Jim

Dante

“Daven...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One Midwestern Pastoralism
• Two Willa Cather
• Three Aldo Leopold
• Four Theodore Roethke
• Five James Wright
• Six Jim Harrison
• Seven Further Views
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index