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During the nineteenth century, the idea of 'genius' became associated with natural landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic. Scott D. Hess explores how those associations defined the modern significance of nature and precipitated the emergence of National Parks and the environmental movement. William Wordsworth's identification with the English Lake District, Henry David Thoreau's with Walden, and John Muir's with Yosemite established the paradigm of the 'landscape of genius,' through which authors and landscapes entered the nature-writing canon and national high culture. The book also explores the significance of race, gender, and class for such landscapes, as evidenced in writings by African American author Frederick Douglass; American woman writer Susan Fenimore Cooper; and British laboring-class poets Robert Burns, John Clare, and Ann Yearsley. Fundamentally reshaping how we understand nineteenth-century transatlantic cultures of nature, Hess reveals the ongoing legacy of the landscape of genius for environmental politics today.
‘Landscapes of Genius makes the Anglo-American nineteenth century come alive through the particularities of Hess's chosen landscaped cultures, locating authors and their texts both in specific places of the distant past, and in contemporary discourse about environment. Driven by an ethical sense of a decolonised canon, this book explores how writers define places, how those places make writers, and how culture constantly remakes land and the natural world.'
Simon Kövesi - Professor of English and Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow
‘Written with conviction, Landscapes of Genius demonstrates that the history of author-love (especially as it manifests itself in literary landscapes and heritage tourism) is inseparable from Anglo-American environmental history. It will be impossible for future scholars to discuss responsibly the legacy of literary landscapes without also taking environmental politics and impacts into account.'
Paul Westover - Professor of English, Brigham Young University
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