The Necessary Earth: Nature and Solitude in American Literature

Wilson O. Clough

Published by University of Texas Press 1964

The Necessary Earth

Nature and Solitude in American Literature

Wilson O. Clough

https://doi.org/10.7560/733138

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Necessary Earth is a study of the degree to which the long American experience with an open frontier has entered into an inherently American literature to distinguish it from that of other lands. Since literature is, in the author’s words, “a compound of time, place, and the individual projection of personal experience and reflection into objective forms,” the American compulsion to communicate their experience and their difference was a virtual guarantee that a native literature would arrive.

The text falls into three major portions. The first considers the “age of wonder,” the impact of New World upon Old World comers to effect profound changes, and to set the new American on the parallel paths of idealism and pragmatism. The second part examines the effort of native-born writers to appropriate this experience for new metaphors and new literary theme. Without this effort, the frontier might have remained no more than a dwindling legend, and the transference to the theme of self-reliance might never have appeared. In the third portion the author turns to the twentieth century, examining here the degree to which the national theme of reliance on experience over tradition has persisted in the work of major authors.

Ranging thus from Jamestown and Plymouth to Wallace Stevens, the book stresses, throughout, the pull of untamed nature on the human spirit, and the echoes of that experience in what is most intrinsic in American literature. Without denying frontier lawlessness or native chauvinism, Clough directs our attention primarily to the problems of the creation of a new language and a new metaphor to meet the new experience, and the persistence of a truly American note into a maturing of both manner and matter.

Author / Editor information

Wilson O. Clough (1894–1990) was Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Wyoming.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Permissions Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
PART I : THE SHOCK OF GEOGRAPHY
i. Prologue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	5
ii. The Age of Wonder Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
iii. A New Kind of Man Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
iv. Nature at Bay—The Cult of the Badman of the West Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
v. Whence a Native Literature? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
PART 2: FRONTIERS OF THOUGHT
vi. A Native Metaphor Is Born Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
vii. Religion on the Frontier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
viii. Affirm and Construct—Emerson and Thoreau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
ix. The Cost of Solitude Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
x. The Poet Comes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
PART 3: VARIATIONS ON A THEME
xi. The Fading Frontier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
xii. Not from Landscape, Not from Flight Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
xiii. A Veneer of Naturalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
xiv. How Clean the Sun Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
xv. Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Copyright year: 1964
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 248

eBook

Published: September 12, 2014
ISBN: 9781477300954