| Landscape with Figures: Nature & Culture New England Contributor(s): Ryden, Kent C. (Author), Franklin, Wayne (Contribution by) |
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ISBN: 0877457883 ISBN-13: 9780877457886 Publisher: University of Iowa Press OUR PRICE: $23.75 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2001 Annotation: Kent Ryden does not deny that the natural landscape of New England is shaped by many centuries of human manipulation, but he also takes the view that nature is everywhere, close to home as well as in more remote wilderness, in the city and in the countryside. In Landscape with Figures he dissolves the border between culture and nature to merge ideas about nature, experiences in nature, and material alterations of nature. Ryden takes his readers from the printed page directly to the field and back again. He often bypasses books and goes to the trees from which they are made and the landscapes they evoke, then returns with a renewed appreciation for just what an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach can bring to our understanding of the natural world. By exploring McPhee's The Pine Barrens and Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, the coastal fiction of New England, surveying and Thoreau's The Maine Woods, Maine's abandoned Cumberland and Oxford Canal, and the natural bases for New England's historical identity, Ryden demonstrates again and again that nature and history are kaleidoscopically linked. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Human Geography - Nature |
| Dewey: 304.209 |
| LCCN: 2001027988 |
| Series: American Land and Life |
| Physical Information: 0.74" H x 5.83" W x 9.32" (1.00 lbs) 342 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - New England |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Kent Ryden does not deny that the natural landscape of New England is shaped by many centuries of human manipulation, but he also takes the view that nature is everywhere, close to home as well as in more remote wilderness, in the city and in the country- side. In Landscape with Figures he dissolves the border between culture and nature to merge ideas about nature, experiences in nature, and material alterations of nature. Ryden takes his readers from the printed page directly to the field and back again. He often bypasses books and goes to the trees from which they are made and the landscapes they evoke, than returns with a renewed appreciation for just what an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach can bring to our understanding of the natural world. By exploring McPhee's The Pine Barrens and Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, the coastal fiction of New England, surveying and Thoreau's The Maine Woods, Maine's abandoned Cumberland and Oxford Canal, and the natural bases for New England's historical identity, Ryden demonstrates again and again that nature and history are kaleidoscopically linked. |