The sketchbook oF GeoFFrey crayon, depicted
the ever-evolving Dutch settlements of New York.
James Fenimore Cooper’s five-volume Leatherstock-
ing Tales follow Natty Bumppo—a European emi-
grant who consistently becomes more native in his
lifestyle and politics—from the East Coast into the
wilderness, all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
And while all three writers concern themselves
with the overarching issue of what it means to be
American, they do so by deliberating specifically on
the individual’s position within his or her environ-
ment. Quite literally, they focus on the situation of
the early American. Furthermore, tough questions
regarding Puritan fervor began to intensify (as
demonstrated, most prominently, in the works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne), leaving the door open for
a new consideration of humankind’s relationship
to nature, one which would be provided by Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
Emerson, a Unitarian minister living in Concord,
Massachusetts, was notably affected by the roman-
tic movement and desired, for his young country, a
literature of its own. His consideration of European
idealism—thoughts advanced by Immanuel Kant,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle,
among others—led to his own brand of Ameri-
can transcendentalism, an ontological inspection in
which nature factored centrally. Emerson believed
that humankind had strayed from its course, thereby
blurring the innate divinity by which all souls relate
to each other and to God. The way to recover this
lost relationship was present in nature, which, Emer-
son maintained, functioned as a sort of blueprint
through which we could witness the mind of God.
His ideas, though initially quite controversial when
published in his long essay Nature (1836), gradually
became more mainstream, particularly since they
were advocated by the stable of talented writers with
whom he surrounded himself in Concord. Margaret
Fuller augmented her feminist societal critiques
with natural observations. Henry David Thoreau
lent Emerson’s abstractions practical examples in
waLden, his account of two years spent living in
the woods. Walt Whitman poeticized Emerson’s
promotion of nature in his passionate tome Leaves
oF Grass. Emerson even sought to take the future
outdoorsman and “wild man” John Muir under his
wing, but Muir preferred his California home. But
just as the movement that sought to rewrite nature
as sacred rather than subordinate began gaining
momentum, the Civil War and the resultant eco-
nomic slump, coupled with urbanization, instead led
writers concerned with the natural world in a new,
less hospitable direction.
And so while nature was portrayed as an enlight-
ening, esteemed realm for much of the mid-1800s,
by the turn of the century this favorable depic-
tion was replaced with caustic naturalist depictions
that reflected the acerbic times. Literary naturalists
refuted the pessimistic and optimistic natural views
employed by the Puritans and transcendentalists,
respectively, opting instead to allow nature to define
itself. Previously popular natural personifications
were eschewed in favor of more objective environ-
mental renderings. These purportedly more realistic
representations envisioned the outdoors as neither
malevolent nor beneficent, but instead indifferent.
Jack London’s tales, including The caLL oF the
wiLd and white FanG, depict an Alaskan interior
unforgiving to both man and beast, whereas Stephen
Crane’s works illustrate similar themes within the
context of a gritty metropolis.
Over the last century or so, the growth of
the environmental movement has increased—and
politicized—the role of nature in literature. John
Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892. The First
World War inspired T. S. Eliot’s The waste Land,
an exposé of a once-promising landscape rendered
dismal and hopeless at the hands of humankind.
The ecologist Aldo Leopold, seeking to heal, at
mid-century proposed his “land ethic,” asserting
that decisions affecting nature should be considered
neither economically nor commercially but morally.
The environmentalist Edward Abbey scolded civi-
lization’s convenience-based impingement on the
wilderness. The writer and scientist Rachel Carson,
in Silent Spring, warned against the lasting effects of
chemical inundation. Transcending the strictly liter-
ary, the Wachowski brothers’ postmodern film The
Matrix trilogy implores us to call into question the
very validity of our perceived surrounding, and the
politician Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient
Truth has proved a powerful ecocritical text. Thus,
while the precise future of natural literature is uncer-nature 75