Travel writing and the natural world, 1768-1840

Paul Smethurst

While there is increasing anxiety about the natural world and many are calling for action on the environment, academic discourse on the subject has been dominated by romantic ideas of wilderness, new primitivisms, and philosophical approaches to the concept of nature. This book explores the heyday of travel writing about the natural world between 1768 and 1840. The starting point is the parallel occurrence of Cook's Pacific voyages, natural history, scenic tourism and romantic travel. The lasting effect of these practices has been to turn nature into a detached and abstract space and travel writing had a central role in this process. Unifying a wide field of enquiry is the argument that travel writing, whether presenting scientific information or aesthetic responses to landscape, shares a common interest in finding order and structure in nature. Even where political imperatives are not explicit, a tendency towards imperial order is found; empire is writ large and small. As little resistance to the idea of order is found, we can conclude that, through nature, travel writing in the eighteenth century was generally supportive of empire, trade and the landowning class.

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[目次]

  • List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction The Scientific Gaze and Museum Order Natural History in the Contact Zone Natural Order: Metaphor and Structure Romantic Technique and Humboldtian Vision Landscape and Nation-Building The English Picturesque as Social Order Natural Sublime and Feminine Sublime Prescribing Nature: Wordsworth's Guide To The Lakes Textual Landscapes and Disappearing Nature Conclusion and Coda Bibliography Index

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この本の情報

書名 Travel writing and the natural world, 1768-1840
著作者等 Smethurst Paul
出版元 Palgrave Macmillan
刊行年月 2012
ページ数 x, 243 p.
大きさ 23 cm
ISBN 9781137030351
NCID BB1567150X
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言語 英語
出版国 イギリス
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