This volume centers on the study of the relations between literature and the environment and poses important questions to an evolving field: why has ecocriticism focused on narrow, more recent historical periods? What has prevented or discouraged critics from extending environmentally-conscious readings further into the past, and what is lost as a consequence? "Early Modern Ecostudies" engages directly with such issues and advances a new practice that borrows from the methodologies of current ecocriticism, interrogates its problematic assumptions, and extends its reach and significance. Dealing with a range of subjects, these essays apply ecocritical methods to traditional authors such as Shakespeare, Sidney, More, and Milton; canonical texts such Edward Taylor's poetry and the Florentine Codex; and documents from the literature of discovery, medicine, and natural history.

The essays in this volume interrogate the unique and often problematic relationship between early modern cultural studies and ecocriticism, providing theoretical insights and models for a future practice that successfully wed the two disciplines.

Anglo-American writers in the revolutionary era used pastoral images to place themselves as native to the continent, argues Thomas Hallock in From the Fallen Tree . Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, as territorial expansion got under way in earnest, and ending with the era of Indian dispossession, the author demonstrates how authors explored the idea of wilderness and political identities in fully populated frontiers. Hallock provides an alternative to the myth of a vacant wilderness found in later writings. Emphasizing shared cultures and conflict in the border regions, he reconstructs the milieu of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, William Bartram, and James Fenimore Cooper, as well as lesser-known figures such as Lewis Evans, Jane Colden, Anne Grant, and Elias Boudinot. State papers, treaty documents, maps, and journals provide a rich backdrop against which Hallock reinterprets the origins of a pastoral tradition. Combining the new western history, ecological criticism, and native American studies, Hallock uncovers the human stories embedded in descriptions of the land. His historicized readings offer an alternative to long-accepted myths about the vanishing backcountry, the march of civilization, and a pristine wilderness. The American pastoral, he argues, grew from the anxiety of independent citizens who became colonizers themselves. |Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century and ending with the era of Indian dispossession, Hallock demonstrates how authors explored the idea of wilderness and political identities in fully populated frontiers. Includes discussion on the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and James Fennimore Cooper, among others.

A selection of writings from naturalists John and William Bartram, who explored Florida in 1765In 1765 father and son naturalists John and William Bartram explored the St. Johns River Valley in Florida, a newly designated British territory and subtropical wonderland. They collected specimens and recorded extensive observations of the region’s plants, animals, geography, ecology, and Native cultures. The chronicle of their adventures provided the world with an intimate look at La Florida. Travels on the St. Johns River includes writings from the Bartrams' journey in a flat-bottomed boat from St. Augustine to the river's swampy headwaters near Lake Loughman, just west of today’s Cape Canaveral. Vivid entries from John's Diary detail the settlement locations of Indigenous people and what vegetation overtook the river's slow current. Excerpts from William's narrative, written a decade later when he tried to make a home in East Florida, contemplate the environment and the river that would come to be regarded as the liquid heart of his celebrated Travels. A selection of personal letters reveal John's misgivings about his son's decision to become a planter in a pine barren with little shelter, but they also speak to William's belated sense of accomplishment for traveling past his father's footsteps. Editors Thomas Hallock and Richard Franz provide valuable commentary and a modern record of the flora and fauna the Bartrams encountered. Taken together, the firsthand accounts and editorial notes help us see the land through the explorers' eyes and witness the many environmental changes the centuries have wrought.