A TERRIBLE BEAUTY The Wilderness of American Literature - Softcover

Raskin, Jonah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587902788 ISBN 13: 9781587902789

Publisher: Regent Press, 2014

Synopsis

ABOUT THE BOOK Shortly before he published Walden; or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau called "The library a wilderness of books." He also noted that while Americans were "clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses." In A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature, Jonah Raskin takes a long close look at the forest of books that poets, novelists and essayists mapped and explored before and after Thoreau. The first work of cultural criticism to look back at writing in the United States from the perspective of the contemporary environmental crisis, Raskin offers insights for students, teachers and lovers of literature as well as for backpackers and hikers who have trekked across untrammeled forests, deserts and mountains. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonah Raskin has taught American literature at Sonoma State University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and as a Fulbright professor at the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent in Belgium. The author of fifteen books, he earned his B.A. at Columbia College in New York, his M.A. at Columbia University and his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, Manchester, England. He lives in northern California and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The L.A. Times, The Nation, The Redwood Coast Review and Catamaran.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

“The contrasts you develop between men and women writers are startling. You remind us that the constructs of European-American men are not the whole of American culture, however central and universal these writers may like to think they are. I appreciated the fact that you follow writers who include indigenous people in their construction of “wilderness.” And I liked that you mention African American writers.” — Julie Allen Professor Emerita, Sonoma State University “Jonah Raskin's A Terrible Beauty is a lucid and refreshingly readable work of cultural criticism. The author takes as his central subject the “wilderness of words” at the heart of American literature, and offers a compelling new take on the forms of capture, captivity and the captivating that define our relationship to the wild.” — Tilar J. Mazzeo Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English, Colby College “Wilderness set the new American nation apart from its European sources and defined the American Dream, though American culture has treated it as something to fear and control, seeing it, in Yeats' phrase and Jonah Raskin's title, as A Terrible Beauty. Raskin explores that tension across an enormous span of American literature, from the earliest explorers to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's an illuminating, painfully revealing, and ultimately inspiring journey.” — Dennis McNally author, On Highway 61 / Race, Culture, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom “Into the wild we go in A Terrible Beauty as Jonah Raskin explores American writers from Henry David Thoreau to F. Scott Fitzgerald, demonstrating the formative omnipresence of wilderness in American literature and thought. We need a cultural dimension to the environmentalist proposition of “rewilding,” a rewilding of our minds and hearts, and here Raskin points the way, learnedly but unpretentiously. Take a walk on the wild side!” — Christopher Phelps Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham

About the Author:

Jonah Raskin has taught American literature at Sonoma State University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and as a Fulbright professor at the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent in Belgium. The author of fifteen books, he earned his B.A. at Columbia College in New York, his M.A. at Columbia University and his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, Manchester, England. He lives in northern California and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The L.A. Times, The Nation, The Redwood Coast Review and Catamaran.

About this edition

• Publisher: Regent Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1587902788
• ISBN 13: 9781587902789
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 370