Wilderness, Garden or Exercise of Power? Images of Nature and Human-Natural Relationships in the USA

• Gorka Braceras Martínez ^[1]
  1. [1] UPV/EHU
• Localización: Moving beyond the pandemic: English and American studies in Spain / coord. por Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, María del Carmen Camus Camus, Jesús Ángel González López, 2022, ISBN 978-84-19024-15-2, págs. 132-136
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The arrival of colonists in American lands changed radically the human-natural relationships in the continent and, later, the conquest of the west (promoted by the Frontier Myth) and the development of industrial society established highly destructive connections (violent domination and exploitation) with the environment. In these historical moments Americans saw nature differently, but their specific ideas shaped their ways of interacting with the world and their values until today. The aim of this paper is to examine these ideas, from an ecocritical perspective, mainly focusing on the wilderness/garden dichotomy. In addition, the utopian idea of the garden will be questioned, based on the opposition to nature-domination manifested, for example, in works by Melville, Hawthorne and Thoreau. Thus, as a result of the analysis, it will be shown that nature-domination is a deeply-ingrained value in the American mindset, although opposition to this domination existed already in the nineteenth century.