Surveying The Interior: Literary Cartographers And The Sense Of Place (environmental Arts And Humanities Series)

From The Very Beginning, American Literature Was Closely Intertwined With Surveying. In Surveying The Interior, Rick Van Noy Explores The Ways That Four American Literary Cartographers - Henry David Thoreau, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, And Wallace Stegner - Concerned Themselves With What It Means To Map Or Survey A Place And What It Means To Write About It. In The Process, He Helps To Define The Ways By Which Space Enters The Human Psyche As Definable Place, As Well As The Ways By Which Physical Landscape Is Transmuted - Through The Vagaries Of Human Perception, Representative Processes, And Emotion - Into A Sense Of Place As An Intimate, Personal Manifestation Of Both Physical And Existential Realities.--jacket. Introduction: Surveying The Height Of Our Mountains, The Country Of Our Mind -- Surveying The Strange: Henry David Thoreau's Intelligence Of Place -- Mapping The Mirage: Clarence King's Impressions Of Place -- Surveying The Sublime: John Wesley Powell's Representations Of Place -- Geography Of Repose: Wallace Stegner's Middle Ground -- Conclusion: A Map Of Connextion. Rick Van Noy. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [199]-209) And Index. Contents......Page 12 List of Illustrations......Page 14 Preface......Page 16 Acknowledgments......Page 22 1 Introduction......Page 26 2 Surveying the Strange......Page 63 3 Mapping the Mirage......Page 98 4 Surveying the Sublime......Page 125 5 Geography of Repose......Page 167 6 Conclusion......Page 196 Notes......Page 212 Works Cited......Page 224 Index......Page 236