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Kealy, Thomas Patrick. "Refiguring divinity : literature and natural history in the scientific revolution /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9987235.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-271). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Wright, David Alan. "A critical edition of book 37 of Pliny's 'Natural history' with introduction and notes." Thesis, University of London, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272161.
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Drayson, Nick English Australian Defence Force Academy UNSW. "Early developments in the literature of Australian natural history : together with a select bibliography of Australian natural history writing, printed in English, from 1697 to the present." Awarded by:University of New South Wales - Australian Defence Force Academy. School of English, 1997. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/38674.
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Early nineteenth-century Eurocentric perceptions of natural history led to the flora and fauna of Australia being thought of as deficient and inferior compared with those of other lands. By the 1820s, Australia had become known as ???the land of contrarieties???. This, and Eurocentric attitudes to nature in general, influenced the expectations and perceptions of immigrants throughout the century. Yet at the same time there was developing an aesthetic appreciation of the natural history of Australia. This thesis examines the tension between these two perceptions in the popular natural history writing of the nineteenth century, mainly through the writing of five authors ??? George Bennett (1804-1893), Louisa Anne Meredith (1812-1895), Samuel Hannaford (1937-1874), Horace Wheelwright (1815-1865) and Donald Macdonald (1859?-1932). George Bennett was a scientist, who saw Australian plants and animals more as scientific specimens than objects of beauty. Louisa Meredith perceived them in the familiar language of English romantic poetry. Samuel Hannaford used another language, that of popular British natural history writers of the mid-nineteenth century. To Horace Wheelwright, Australian animals were equally valuable to the sportsman???s gun as to the naturalist???s pen. Donald Macdonald was the only one of these major writers to have been born in Australia. Although proud of his British heritage, he rejoiced in the beauty of his native land. His writing demonstrates his joy, and his novel attitude to Australian natural history continued and developed in the present century.
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Nickerson, Erika Lawren. "The Measure of All Things: Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467310.
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This work explores how writers of the late Roman Republic use the concept of nature rhetorically, in order to talk about and either reinforce or challenge social inequality. Comparisons between humans and animals receive special attention, since writers of that time often equate social status with natural status by assimilating certain classes of person to certain classes of animal. It is the aim of this study to clarify the ideology which supported the conflation of natural and social hierarchy, by explicating the role that nature was thought to play in creating and maintaining the inequality both between man and man, and between man and animal. In investigating this issue, this study also addresses the question of whether the Romans took a teleological view of human society, as they did of nature, and ultimately concludes that they did not. It proposes, rather, that the conceptual mechanism which naturalized social inequality, and which drove the assimilation of human to animal, was the belief that there is one, natural measure of worth and status for all creatures: utility to the human community.
Chapter 1 identifies some pertinent beliefs, commonly found in Republican texts, about nature, animals, humans, and the relationship of all three to each other. Chapter 2 considers whether these beliefs have a philosophical provenance, by discussing Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery and Stoic views on the institution of slavery, and their possible relation to the ideas expressed in Roman sources. Chapter 3 returns to Republican texts, including popular oratory, and examines comparisons between domestic animals and humans in the treatment of slavery and wage-earning. Chapter 4 examines comparisons between wild animals and humans in discussions about violence and primitive peoples, and in political invective.Classics
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Wang, Laura Li Ching. "Natural Law and the Law of Nature in Early British Beast Literature." Thesis, Harvard University, 2013. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11234.
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In the tumultuous political environment of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Britain, animal literature saw rapid development and innovation. Beast fable and epic, which already had a long tradition in Latin and French, gained new vigor and popularity in English and Scots renditions. Simultaneously, a new strain of political theory appeared in the vernacular. This dissertation makes a tripartite argument about the relationship between these two discourses. First, writers of literature and political theory alike struggled to reconcile an optimistic view of human society, inherent in the prevailing philosophical tradition of natural law, with the widespread corruption they witnessed in ecclesiastical and royal courts. The fruits of this struggle were darkly humorous works of beast epic and fable in the former case, and pragmatic political theory in the latter. Second, because of its literary character, beast literature actually proved more adventurous than political theory in demonstrating how one might use dissimulation to dominate the predatory world of politics, and in showing the moral and linguistic exhaustion that could result from such manipulation of others. Third, as political writers adapted their theories to reflect politics as it was actually practiced, they explicitly turned to beast literature for images and exempla, so that the animal characters of Aesopian fable and Reynardian epic stealthily crept into works of serious political inquiry.
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Bogard, Paul W. "Blessings from a small house /." abstract and full text PDF (UNR users only), 2007. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3280747.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2007."August, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-270). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2008]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.
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West, Alan George H. "The natural history of the future: The related importance of history and nature to the work of Richard Jefferies, William Morris, H. G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6083.
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Utopias and dystopias are forms of social criticism in which the author draws on an existing society to create a perfected (utopian) or exaggerated (dystopian) projection which is set in a different time and/or space from the original. As reactions to problematic, or potentially problematic, situations and developments, utopias and dystopias are always connected to change---they explicitly or implicitly present an argument for change, and/or they embody a response to it. This thesis focuses on four English authors who wrote utopias and/or dystopias between the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and the middle part of the Twentieth: Richard Jefferies, William Morris, H. G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley. In each case they not only responded to recent, endemic, or continuing change, but also implicitly or explicitly sought it. The narratives they wrote are founded in change and emerged during a time of flux. Jefferies responded to a declining rural culture, Morris to an expanding industrial culture, Wells to the material uncertainties evoked by evolution theory, and Huxley to the post-Darwin, post-War metaphysical incertitude which appeared to him to have decentred the culture. Each author also sought appropriate change to remedy the particular circumstances of which he was critical. This thesis looks at these authors, not simply in terms of their response to change, but in terms of their attitudes to the relatively enduring structures of nature and history. Nature, in its various manifestations, had different connotations for different authors. To Jefferies, nature---as local landscape and cosmic immensity, as ears of corn and universal life force---offered, amongst other things, an essential continuity that modern life was eroding. For Morris, nature offered inspiration and the possibility of a harmonious interrelationship with humanity once the restless era of capitalism had been succeeded by a restful future in communism. To Wells, both external and internal nature offered a dangerous unpredictability which must be controlled, while Huxley believed that humanity's struggle with the environment and consequent negative impact on it could be dissolved in the possibility of epiphanic fusion with the cosmos. Central to all their various conceptions of, and attitudes toward, nature, however, is the question of what are the shaping characteristics of humanity's relationship with nature. The unfolding of history, in the simple sense of time passing, was not synonymous with progress for these writers, and the perception that the temporal current was actually carrying society, or elements of it, toward regression and/or fragmentation inspired their remedial dystopian and utopian texts. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Buffington, Nancy Jane. "From freedom to slavery: Robert Montgomery Bird and the natural law tradition." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282827.
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This dissertation explicates the rhetoric of liberty and slavery in the novels of Robert Montgomery Bird (1805-54). Bird, now largely forgotten and ignored, was prolific, popular, and at the center of Philadelphia culture and national politics from the 1830s until his death. His work represents a particularly clear intersection of political ideology and fiction at a time of cultural growth and conflict. Like many of his contemporaries, Bird saw his fiction as fulfilling a patriotic mission as he attempted to define and defend the nation's history, emergent identity, and contemporary political agenda. It is this mission, evident in his countless meditations on rights and rebellion, freedom and slavery, captivity and bondage, that I explore. Despite repeated scenes of unjust captivity, Bird's eloquent celebrations of liberty, ultimately work to deny the freedoms they evoke, rationalizing instead the conquest of indigenous populations, slavery, and national expansion. This analysis of Bird's rhetoric of freedom is grounded in an exploration of the natural law tradition. I trace the evolution of this philosophy from 17th-century England to its conservative manifestations in antebellum America. Within this context, Bird's conservative reworking of terms such as "freedom," "slavery" and "rights" is neither new nor unusual, but constitutes merely one episode in the ongoing adaptation of such terms in natural law. Natural law emerges as an exceedingly pliable theory, capable of serving both radical and conservative agendas, rebellion and the maintenance of the status quo, the defense and the denial of rights. In addition to natural law, my discussion of Bird's eight novels explores literary traditions from the historical romance to the captivity narrative to the satire, and historical contexts from the Spanish conquest of Mexico to 18th-century American frontier struggles to Southern slavery. I also place Bird's fiction into the context of contemporary political discourses, including proslavery and abolitionist ideologies, the discussion of Indian removals, and debates over national expansion. Finally, I substantiate my conclusions with original research from the University of Pennsylvania's archives of Bird's manuscripts, notebooks, letters, and political journalism.
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Hart, Hilary 1969. "Sentimental spectacles : the sentimental novel, natural language, and early film performance." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/297.
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Advisor: Mary E. Wood.
xii, 181 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm. Print copy also available for check out and consultation in the University of Oregon's library under the call number: PS374.S714 H37 2004.The nineteenth-century American sentimental novel has only in the last twenty years received consideration from the academy as a legitimate literary tradition. During that time feminist scholars have argued that sentimental novels performed important cultural work and represent an important literary tradition. This dissertation contributes to the scholarship by placing the sentimental novel within a larger context of intellectual history as a tradition that draws upon theoretical sources and is a source itself for later cultural developments. In examining a variety of sentimental novels, I establish the moral sense philosophy as the theoretical basis of the sentimental novel's pathetic appeals and its theories of sociability and justice. The dissertation also addresses the aesthetic features of the sentimental novel and demonstrates again the tradition's connection to moral sense philosophy but within the context of the American elocution revolution. I look at natural language theory to render more legible the moments of emotional spectacle that are the signature of sentimental aesthetics. The second half of the dissertation demonstrates a connection between the sentimental novel and silent film. Both mediums rely on a common aesthetic storehouse for signifying emotions. The last two chapters of the dissertation compare silent film performance with emotional displays in the sentimental novel and in elocution and acting manuals. I also demonstrate that the films of D. W. Griffith, especially The Birth of a Nation, draw upon on the larger conventions of the sentimental novel.
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Tredinnick, Mark, University of Western Sydney, of Arts Education and Social Sciences College, and School of Social Ecology and Lifelong Learning. "Writing the wild : place, prose and the ecological imagination." THESIS_CAESS_SELL_Tredinnick_M.xml, 2003. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/668.
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In Australia, we have not yet composed a literature of place in which the Australian geographies sing, so in this dissertation, the author goes travelling with some North American writers in their native landscapes, exploring the practice of landscape witness, of ecological imagination. They carry on there,looking for the ways in which the wild music of the land be discerned and expressed in words. He talks with them about the business of writing the life of places. He takes heed of the natural histories in which their works have arisen, looking for correlations between those physical terrains - the actual earth, the solid ground of their work - and the terrain of these writers' prose, wondering how the prose (and sometimes the poetry) may be said to be an expression of the place. This work, in a sense, is a natural history of six nature writers; it is an ecological imagining of their lives and works and places. Writing the Wild is a journey through the light, the wind, the rock, the water, sometimes the fire that makes the land that houses the writers who compose these lyrics of place. Most of what it learns about those writers, it learns from the places themselves. This dissertation takes landscapes seriously. It reads the works of these writers as though the landscapes of which and in which they write might be worthy of regard in understanding the terrain of their texts. It lets places show light on works of words composed within them.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Walmsley, Jonathan Craig. "John Locke's natural philosophy (1632-1671)." Thesis, Boston Spa, U.K. : British Library Document Supply Centre, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.286485.
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Chung, Ka-yin Gladys, and 鍾嘉賢. "Natural landscapes in the literary writings of the Eastern Jin (A.D. 316-420) and Liu Song (A.D. 420-479)Eras." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B30085494.
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Tredinnick, Mark. "Writing the wild : place, prose and the ecological imagination." Thesis, View thesis, 2003. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/668.
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In Australia, we have not yet composed a literature of place in which the Australian geographies sing, so in this dissertation, the author goes travelling with some North American writers in their native landscapes, exploring the practice of landscape witness, of ecological imagination. They carry on there,looking for the ways in which the wild music of the land be discerned and expressed in words. He talks with them about the business of writing the life of places. He takes heed of the natural histories in which their works have arisen, looking for correlations between those physical terrains - the actual earth, the solid ground of their work - and the terrain of these writers' prose, wondering how the prose (and sometimes the poetry) may be said to be an expression of the place. This work, in a sense, is a natural history of six nature writers; it is an ecological imagining of their lives and works and places. Writing the Wild is a journey through the light, the wind, the rock, the water, sometimes the fire that makes the land that houses the writers who compose these lyrics of place. Most of what it learns about those writers, it learns from the places themselves. This dissertation takes landscapes seriously. It reads the works of these writers as though the landscapes of which and in which they write might be worthy of regard in understanding the terrain of their texts. It lets places show light on works of words composed within them.
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Tredinnick, Mark. "Writing the wild : place, prose & the ecological imagination /." View thesis, 2003. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20040630.093441/index.html.
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McFarland, Sarah Elizabeth. "Engendering the wild : the construction of animals in twentieth century nature writing /." view abstract or download file of text, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3181112.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-179). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Brooks, Britton. "The restoration of Creation in the early Anglo-Saxon vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:17b5d20e-446e-4891-90a6-f02a196a7409.
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This thesis explores the relationship between Creation and the saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their Anglo-Latin and Old English vitae. It argues that this relationship is best understood through received theological exegesis concerning Creation's present state in the postlapsarian world. The exegesis has its foundation in Augustine's interpretations of the Genesis narrative, though it enters the textual tradition of the vitae via an adapted portion of De Genesi contra Manichaeos in Bede's metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCM). Both Augustine and Bede argue, with slight differences, that fallen Creation can be restored into prelapsarian harmony with humanity by way of sanctity. Each individual vita engages with this understanding of the Fall in distinct, though ultimately interrelated, ways, and the chapters of this thesis will therefore explore each text individually. Chapter 1 argues that the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCA) unites Cuthbert's ability to restore Creation with the theme of monastic obedience, linking the ordering of a monastery to the restoration of prelapsarian harmony. The VCA also seeks to create sites for potential lay pilgrimage in the landscapes of Farne and Lindisfarne by highlighting the present efficacy of Cuthbert's miracles. Chapter 2 argues that Bede's VCM not only reveals his early attempt to fashion Cuthbert into the primary saint for Britain, via a focus on Cuthbert's obedience to the Divine Office, but also that the restoration of Creation functions as a ruminative tool. Chapter 3 argues that Bede transforms the nature of Cuthbert's sanctity in his prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCP) from static to developmental, influenced by the Evagrian Vita Antonii, and that Creation is adapted to function as the impetus for, and evidence of, Cuthbert's progression. Chapter 4 argues that Felix's Vita Sancti Guthlaci (VSG) unites the development of Guthlac with a physically delineated Creation, and that the restoration of Creation is elevated to an even greater degree here than in Bede's hagiography. Chapter 5 argues that the author of the Old English Prose Guthlac (OEPG) grounds his vita by utilizing a landscape lexis shared with contemporary boundary clauses, so that here the relationship between the saint and Creation has greater force; it further argues that Guthlac A uniquely connects Guthlac with the doctrine of replacement, consolidating links between his arrival to the eremitic space and the restoration of prelapsarian Eden.
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Hanan, Rachel Ann 1978. "Words in the world: The place of literature in Early Modern England." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11156.
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ix, 268 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number."Words in the World" details the ways that the place of rhetoric and literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changes in response to the transition from natural philosophy to Cartesian mechanism. In so doing, it also offers a constructive challenge to today's environmental literary criticism, challenging environmental literary critics' preoccupation with themes of nature and, by extension, with representational language. Reading authors from Thomas More to Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson through changes in physics, cartography, botany, and zoology, "Words in the World" argues that literature occupies an increasingly separate place from the real world. "Place" in this context refers to spatiotemporal dimensions, taxonomic affiliations, and the relationships between literature and the physical world. George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589), for instance, limits the way that rhetoric is part of the world to the ways that it can be numbered (meter, rhyme scheme, and so forth); metaphor and other tropes, however, are duplicitous. In contrast, for an earlier era of natural philosophers, tropes were the grammar of the universe. "Words in the World" culminates with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621/1651), in which the product of literature's split from the physical world is literary melancholy. Turning to today's environmental literary criticism, the dissertation thus historicizes ecocriticism's nostalgic melancholy for the extratextual physical world. Indeed, Early Modern authors' inquiries into the place of literature and the relationships between that place and the physical world in terms of literary forms and structures, suggests the importance of ecoformalism to Early Modern scholarship. In particular, this dissertation argues that Early Modern authors treat literary structures as types of performative language. This dissertation revises the standard histories of Early Modern developments in rhetoric and of the literary text, and it provides new insight into the materiality of literary form.
Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson, English; William Rossi, Member, English; George Rowe, Member, English; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member, Philosophy
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Grover, Breanne. "An Awakened Sense of Place: Thoreauvian Patterns in Willa Cather's Fiction." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2006. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1443.pdf.
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Lamborn, Erin Alice. "From Darwin to Dracula: A study of literary evolution." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2836.
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Argues that, without the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" would not have been written with their distinct style and themes, as evolution clashes with degeneration and female power (and the sexuality derived from that power) clashes with the new science. Stoker and Wilde combine the science of the late 19th century with the characters of their imaginations. Natural and sexual selection plays a part in these characters' core development. The mixture of sexuality, science and power in these two novels all combine to formulate what is known as Victorian sexology.
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Andersson, Burnett Linda Carin Cecilia. "Northern noble savages? : Edward Daniel Clarke and British primitivist narratives on Scotland and Scandinavia, c.1760-1822." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6410.
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This thesis analyses a growing metropolitan British fascination with northern Scandinavia and Scotland towards the end of the eighteenth century. These two northern regions underwent a dramatic transformation, from being places people avoided to being realms writers considered worthy of visiting, observing and narrating. This thesis examines the importance of the primitivist discourse of northern noble savagery in that transformation. While encounters with the ‘noble savage’ were largely associated with the extra-European world, the fascination with the north was in observing Europe’s very own native examples of the breed. The Highlanders and Islanders of Scotland and the northern Scandinavians, the Sami people in particular, were often romanticised in this context. Despite the Sami being celebrated in British fiction and natural-history works at the time, there has been, in contrast with Scandinavia’s ‘Vikings’, little scholarly attention given to them in a British context. The origin and function of the northern-noble-savage discourse is anchorerd in naturalhistory texts. This study emphasises the importance of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who travelled in Lapland in 1732, in constructing idealised depictions of the Sami. Linnaeus also provided a model of domestic exploration in which naturalists produced inventories of regions and their inhabitants previously relatively unmapped by the state. Although the image of the northern savage often bore little resemblance to reality, it had real application and effect. Such imagery allowed allegedly backward regions to be incorporated into the national narrative, and through this the national community sought to benefit from these peripheries and their communities. The thesis also studies the consequences of actual encounters between metropolitan observers and the local populations of these northern regions. The travelogues of the celebrated natural historian and traveller Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822), who sojourned in Scotland and Scandinavia in 1797-1799, is the focus of the investigation. In a comparative analysis of his Scottish and Scandinavian accounts, this study presents Clarke as an ambivalent primitivist who both praised and condemned the Highlanders and Sami. Clarke was, for example, critical of what he regarded as the superstitious beliefs of both peoples. His narrative on the Highlanders was, however, far more positive than that on the Sami because of Clarke's adherence to racial classifications, which paradoxically Linnaeus had instigated, which demoted the Sami to mere savages. After Clarke’s death in 1822, attitudes towards the Highlanders and Sami continued to diverge against a backdrop of increased racialisation in British thought. While the Highlander became firmly integrated into a British narrative, the Sami was displaced by growing interest in a Scandinavian invader of Britain, the Viking, whose image went on to provide a robust challenge to the romanticisation of the Celtic Highlander in the century that followed. Meanwhile, the optimism over the Highlands’ economic prospects that had permeated the Linnaean project of exploration in Scotland was now gone. Whereas the idealised gaze of the eighteenth-century explorer had surveyed Highland history in order to chart a course to the future, the focus of the nineteenth-century tourist tended to be firmly on the past.
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Richmond, Andrew Murray. "Reading Landscapes in Medieval British Romance." The Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428671857.
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Raye, Lee. "The forgotten beasts in medieval Britain : a study of extinct fauna in medieval sources." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2016. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/93165/.
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This thesis identifies and discusses historical and literary sources describing four species in the process of reintroduction: lynx (Lynx lynx), large whale (esp. Eubalena glacialis), beaver (Castor fiber) and crane (Grus grus). The scope includes medieval and early modern texts in English, Latin, and Welsh written in Britain before the species went extinct. The aims for each species are: (i) to reconstruct the medieval cultural memory; (ii) to contribute a cohesive extinction narrative; and (iii) to catalogue and provide an eco-sensitive reading of the main historical and literary references. Each chapter focuses on a different species: 1. The chapter on lynxes examines some new early references to the lynx and argues that the species became extinct in south Britain c.900 AD. Some hard-to-reconcile seventeenth century Scottish accounts are also explored. 2. The chapter on whales attributes the beginning of whale hunting to the ninth century in Britain, corresponding with the fish event horizon; but suggests a professional whaling industry only existed from the late medieval period. 3. The chapter on beavers identifies extinction dates based on the increasingly confused literary references to the beaver after c.1300 in south Britain and after c.1600 in Scotland, and the increase in fur importation. 4. The chapter on cranes emphasises the mixed perception of the crane throughout the medieval and early modern period. Cranes were simultaneously depicted as courtly falconers’ birds, greedy gluttons, and vigilant soldiers. More generally, the thesis considers the levels of reliability between eyewitness accounts and animal metaphors. It examines the process of ‘redelimitation’ which is triggered by population decline, whereby nomenclature and concepts attached to one species become transferred to another. Finally, it emphasises geographical determinism: species generally become extinct in south Britain centuries before Scotland.
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Amemate, Amelia AmeDela. "Black Bodies, White Masks?: Straight Hair Culture and Natural Hair Politics Among Ghanaian Women." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu157797167417396.
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Russell, Rowland S. "The Ecology of Paradox: Disturbance and Restoration in Land and Soul." [Yellow Springs, Ohio] : Antioch University, 2008. http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=antioch1204556861.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University New England, 2008.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed November 11, 2009). "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England (2008)."--from the title page. Advisor: Mitchell Thomashow. Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-296).
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Nischik, Traude-Marie. "Das volkssprachliche Naturbuch im späten Mittelalter Sachkunde und Dinginterpretation bei Jacob van Maerlant und Konrad von Megenberg /." Tübingen : M. Niemeyer, 1986. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34898803b.
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Hong, Jin Ho. "Das naturalistisch-szientistische Literaturkonzept und die Schlossgeschichten Eduard von Keyserlings." Würzburg Königshausen und Neumann, 2006. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2803813&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
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Colborn, Robert Maurice. "Manilius on the nature of the Universe : a study of the natural-philosophical teaching of the Astronomica." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:481db8c5-4a3b-42ff-b301-eafc3e2f9ad8.
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The thesis has two aims. The first is to show that a more charitable approach to Manilius, such as Lucretian scholarship has exhibited in recent decades, yields a wealth of exciting discoveries that earlier scholarship has not thought to look for. The thesis' contributions to this project centre on three aspects of the poem: (I) the sophistication of its didactic techniques, which draw and build on various predecessors in the tradition of didactic poetry; (II) its cosmological, physical and theological basis, which has no exact parallel elsewhere in either astrology or natural philosophy, and despite clear debts to various traditions, is demonstrably the invention of our poet; (III) the extent to which rationales and physical bases are offered for points of astrological theory – something unparalleled in other astrological texts until Ptolemy. The second, related aim of the thesis is to offer a more satisfying interpretation of the poem as a whole than those that have hitherto been put forward. Again the cue comes from Lucretius: though the DRN is at first sight primarily an exposition of Epicurean physics, it becomes clear that its principal concern is ethical, steering its reader away from superstition, the fear of death and other damaging thought-patterns. Likewise, the Astronomica makes the best sense when its principal message is taken to be not the set of astrological statements that make up its bulk, but the poem’s peculiar world- view, for which those statements serve as an evidential basis. It is, on this reading, just as much a poem ‘on the nature of the universe', which provides the title of my thesis. At the same time, however, it finds new truth in the conventional assumption that Manilius is first and foremost an advocate of astrology: it reveals his efforts to defend astrology at all costs, uncovers strategies for making the reader more amenable to further astrological study and practice, and contends that someone with Manilius' set of beliefs must first have been a devotee of astrology before embracing a natural- philosophical perspective such as his. The thesis is divided into prolegomena and commentaries, which pursue the aims presented above in two different but complementary ways. The prolegomena comprise five chapters, outlined below: Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive survey of the evidence for the cosmology, physics and theology of the Astronomica, and discovers that a coherent and carefully thought-out world-view underlies the poem. It suggests that this Stoicising world- view is drawn exclusively from a few philosophical works of Cicero, but is nonetheless the product of careful synthesis. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between this world-view and earlier Academic criticism of astrology and concludes that the former has been developed as a direct response to these criticisms, specifically as set out in Cicero’s De divinatione. Chapter 3 examines the later impact of Manilius’ astrological world-view, as far as it can be detected, assessing the evidence for the early reception of his poem and its role in the history of philosophical astrology. The overwhelming impression is that the work was received as a serious contribution to debate over the physical and theological underpinnings of astrology; its world-view was absorbed into the mainstream of astrological theory and directly targeted in the next wave of Academic criticism of astrology. Chapter 4 looks at the more subtle strategies of persuasion that are at work in the Astronomica. It observes, first, a number of structural devices and word- patternings that set up the poem as a model of the universe it describes. This first part of the chapter concludes by asking what didactic and/or philosophical purpose such modelling could serve. The second part examines how, by a gradual process of habituation-through-metaphor, the reader is made familiar with the conventional astrological way of thinking about the world, which might otherwise have struck him as a baffling mass of contradictions. The third part looks at the use of certain rhetorical figures, particularly paradox, to re-emphasise important physical claims and assist the process of habituation. Chapter 5 takes on the task of making sense of the Astronomica as a whole, seeking out an underlying rationale behind the choice and ordering of material, accounting as well as is possible for its apparently premature end, and asking why, if it is a serious piece of natural-philosophical teaching, it so often appears to be self- undermining. A short epilogue asks what path can have led Manilius to embark on such a work as the Astronomica. It offers a sketch of the author as an adherent (but not a practitioner) of astrology, who had developed a philosophical system first as scaffolding for an art under threat, but had then come to see more importance in that philosophical underpinning than in the activities of prediction. The lemmatised commentaries that follow cover several passages from the first book of the Astronomica. As crucial as the remaining four books are to his natural-philosophical teaching, it is in this part of the poem that Manilius concentrates the direct expositions of his world-view. Like the chapters, the commentaries' two concerns are the nature and the exposition of the work's world-view. Each of the commentaries has its own focus, but all make full use of the format to tease out the poet's teaching strategies and watch his techniques operate 'in real time' over protracted stretches of text. Finally, an appendix presents the case for the Astronomica as the earliest evidence for the use of plane-image star maps. At two points in his tour of the night sky Manilius describes the positions of constellations in a way that suggests that he is consulting a stereographic projection of each hemisphere, and that he is assuming his reader has one to hand, too. This observation casts valuable new light on the development of celestial cartography.
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Meisen, Lydia. "Die Charakterisierung der Tiere in Buffons Histoire naturelle." Würzburg Königshausen & Neumann, 2008. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=3052521&prov=M&dokv̲ar=1&doke̲xt=htm.
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Wallmann, Elisabeth. "The political economy of eighteenth-century insects : natural history and political economy in France, 1700-1789." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2017. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/100285/.
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This dissertation argues that insects provided a crucial lens through which Enlightenment thinkers could reimagine and represent their societies. It demomstrates that the understanding of the functioning of their individual bodies, the close observation of their collective behaviour, and its manipulation and management, helped eighteenth-century scholars to conceptualise, and root in nature, their social orders and the changes that they wished to see in them. While insect collectives such as bee swarms or ant colonies that had long been used to metaphorically model human societies, in the eighteenth century, these metaphors were reformulated and given an empirical basis. Investigating writings on insects on the part of natural historians, agronomists, philosophes and physicians, the thesis contributes to the growing literature on the role of animals in human history in general and in the Enlightenment in particular. It builds on two scholarly traditions: French studies and the cultural history of scientific, economic and political knowledge (mainly written after the 1980s). I take from French studies methods for the close reading of texts and more recent ideas on how ‘to bridge’ different fields of knowledge; the latter discipline will be useful in providing ideas about the history of observation and experimentation, theories of the animal and human body as well as eighteenth-century understanding of political economy. As this dissertation demonstrates, insects helped conceptualise new ideas of the human individual and his or her passions (chapters 1 and 2), of how human collectives are formed (chapter 3) and how governments can manipulate and regulate them in the most profitable ways possible (chapters 4 and 5). By investigating Enlightenment writings on insects, this thesis shows, we can recover part of the rich history of our modern understanding of our own ways of living together.
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Moore, Charles. "La sacralización de la historia natural en La novena maravilla de Juan de Espinosa Medrano." Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2013. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/103268.
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Buglass, Abigail Kate. "Repetition and internal allusion in Lucretius' 'De Rerum Natura'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b20951f7-d299-4c5f-8470-5e67be1340ff.
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This thesis aims to solve the apparent problem of the frequent repetitions in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (DRN). Verbal repetitions of many different lengths pervade DRN, and are noted in the scholarship. Yet a consensus has not been reached as to their purpose and function, or even if they rightly belong in the text. Multi-linear repetitions are viewed as a temporary stop-gap which Lucretius would have removed or adjusted had he lived long enough to effect it; or as later interpolations; while shorter repetitions are underplayed or even ignored altogether. But repetitions and internal allusions in DRN are part of a purposeful, meaningful didactic and rhetorical strategy, and they form much of the intellectual structure of the poem. These internal connections combine in DRN to form a remarkably complex intratextual network. The thesis argues that repetition is a crucial way in which Lucretius conveys his arguments and persuades the reader to pursue a rational life. Chapter 1 analyses the ways in which Lucretius' epic predecessors used repetition and how Lucretius may have applied these models. Chapter 2 looks at the internal evidence for the alleged unfinished state of the poem and examines the function of long repetitions in DRN. Chapter 3 investigates the rhetorical background to and functions of different kinds of repetition in DRN. Chapter 4 explores the didactic and psychological effects of repetitions and internal allusions. Chapter 5 shows how repetition creates an image of the world Lucretius describes: just as Lucretius tells us that atoms and compounds make up different substances depending on their arrangement in combination, so repetitions perform different functions and produce different outcomes depending on their placement in the text. Throughout the poem, repetition serves again and again to reinforce Lucretius' message, creating argumentative unity, and bringing order from chaos.
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Gairn, Louisa. "Aspects of modern Scottish literature and ecological thought." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14839.
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'Aspects of Modern Scottish Literature and Ecological Thought' argues that the science and philosophy of 'ecology' has had a profound impact on Scottish literature since the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, and relates the work of successive generations of Scottish writers to concurrent developments in ecological thought and the environmental sciences. Chapter One suggests that, while Romantic ways of thinking about the natural world remained influential in nineteenth-century culture, new environmental theories provided fresh ways of perceiving the world, evident from the writings of Scottish mountaineers. Chapter Two explores the confrontation of modernity and wilderness in the fiction and travel writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, and some contemporaries such as John Muir. Chapter Three suggests that ecologically-sensitive local and global concerns, rather than 'national' ones per se, are central to the work of Hugh MacDiarmid, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and others, while Chapter Four demonstrates that post-war 'rural' writers including Nan Shepherd, Neil Gunn, Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown, often viewed as peripheral, are actually central and of international relevance, and challenges the assumption that there is a fundamental divide between Scottish rural and urban writing. Finally, Chapter Five argues that contemporary writers John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and Alan Warner are not only reviewing human relationships with nature, but also the role writing has to play in exploring and strengthening that relationship, helping to determine the ecological 'value' of poetry and fiction. By looking at Scottish literature through the lens of ecological thought, and engaging with international discourses of 'Ecocriticism', this thesis provides a fresh perspective in contrast to the dominant critical views of modern Scottish literature, and demonstrates that Scottish writing constitutes a heritage of ecological thought which, in this age of environmental awareness, should be recognised as not only relevant, but vital.
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Pasquier, Justine. "Processus de patrimonialisation des sites religieux dans les espaces protégés de montagne : la Grande Chartreuse(Préalpes du Nord) et la vallée de la Qadisha-forêt des Cèdres du Dieu (Nord-Liban)." Phd thesis, Université de Grenoble, 2011. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00682701.
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La recherche menée dans le cadre de cette thèse a pour objet d'analyser et de comprendre les dynamiques émanant de la relation patrimoine religieux / espaces de montagne protégés (patrimoine naturel) en réinterrogeant la persistante rupture nature-culture et les significations du sacré dans le contexte patrimonial. Il s'agit aussi d'appréhender la nature et la signification des " lieux et bâtiments religieux ", ainsi que leur rôle dans les processus de patrimonialisation et de réappropriation des espaces de montagne par les différents acteurs du territoire. Cette thèse de géographie s'inscrit dans la réflexion actuelle de redéfinition des missions des Parcs naturels et dans le mouvement de promotion de la notion de " paysage culturel " par les instances internationales (e.g. UNESCO). Le site du monastère de la Grande-Chartreuse (Parc naturel régional de la Chartreuse), la vallée de la Qadisha et la forêt des Cèdres de Dieu (Nord-Liban) sont apparus comme des terrains riches permettant de mener à bien cette recherche doctorale qui mêle géographie culturelle et espaces montagnards. L'approche qualitative a été privilégiée pour répondre à cette problématique. Cette recherche s'appuie ainsi sur la chronosystémique, l'analyse de la littérature viatique et de données collectées (rapports officiels, législations, cartographie, relevés de terrains, interviews etc.).
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Hallengren, Anders. "The code of Concord : Emerson's search for universal laws." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap och idéhistoria, 1994. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-14223.
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The purpose of this work is to detect a pattern: the concordance of Ethics and Aesthetics, Poetics and Politics in the most influential American thinker of the nineteenth century. It is an attempt to trace a basic concept of the Emersonian transcendentalist doctrine, its development, its philosophical meaning and practical implications. Emerson’s thought is analyzed genetically in search of the generating paradigm, or the set of axioms from which his aesthetic ideas as well as his political reasoning are derived. Such a basic structure, or point of convergence, is sought in the emergence of Emerson’s idea of universal laws that repeat themselves on all levels of reality. A general introduction is given in Part One, where the crisis in Emerson’s life is seen as representing and foreshadowing the deeper existential crisis of modern man. In Part 2 we follow the increasingly skeptical theologian’s turn to science, where he tries to secure a safe secular foundation for ethical good and right and to solve the problem of evil. Part 3 shows how Emerson’s conception of the laws of nature and ethics is applied in his political philosophy. In Part 4, Emerson’s ideas of the arts are seen as corresponding to his views of nature, morality, and individuality. Finally, in Part 5, the ancient and classical nature of Concord philosophy is brought into focus. The book concludes with a short summary.
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Park, E. C. "Plato and Lucretius as philosophical literature : a comparative study." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:97c3ba13-d229-429d-83fc-138fcbaf58b1.
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This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.
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Takei, Shion. "An Ecocritical Analysis of Modern Japanese Literary History : Becomings of Self, Nature and Literature at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-400546.
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Situated in environmental history and ecocriticism, this thesis traces the emergence of modern Japanese literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using agential realism and its concepts ‘diffraction’ and ‘becoming’, this thesis conducts an anti-essential ecocritical analysis. It aims to overcome recurring dualisms in literary analyses and to trace negotiations of concepts such as ‘nature’ and ‘self’ in modern Japanese literature. The thesis scrutinises ‘diffractions’ between the subject and the object in novels and through very acts of producing novels. These ‘diffractions’ are analysed in relation to ‘becomings’ of the concept ‘nature’ as well as ‘literature’ in the context of Japanese modernisation. Based on diverse struggles in ‘becomings’ in modern literary history, the thesis concludes with questioning the cliché of Japanese culture (the lack of absolute ‘self’ and ‘love of nature’) and also comments on analyses of ‘diffractions’ as a viable method for ecocritical analyses or the ‘ecologisation’ of literary analyses.
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Sholty, Janet Poindexter. "Into the Woods: Wilderness Imagery as Representation of Spiritual and Emotional Transition in Medieval Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1997. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc501240/.
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Wilderness landscape, a setting common in Romantic literature and painting, is generally overlooked in the art of the Middle Ages. While the medieval garden and the city are well mapped, the medieval wilderness remains relatively trackless. Yet the use of setting to represent interior experience may be traced back to the Neo-Platonic use of space and movement to define spiritual development. Separating themselves as far as possible from the material world, such writers as Origen and Plotinus avoided use of representational detail in their spatial models; however, both the visual artists and the authors who adopted the Neo-Platonic paradigm, elaborated their emotional spaces with the details of the classical locus amoenus and of the exegetical desert, while retaining the philosophical concern with spiritual transition. Analysis of wilderness as an image for spiritual and emotional transition in medieval literature and art relates the texts to an iconographic tradition which, along with motifs of city and garden, provides a spatial representation of interior progress, as the medieval dialectic process provides a paradigm for intellectual resolution. Such an analysis relates the motif to the core of medieval intellectual experience, and further suggests significant connections between medieval and modern narratives in regard to the representation of interior experience. The Divine Comedy and related Continental texts employ both classical and exegetical sources in the representation of psychological transition and spiritual conversion. Similar techniques are also apparent in English texts such as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon elegies, in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and Troilus and Criseyde, and in the northern English The Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These literary texts, further, include both ideas and techniques which are analogous to those of visual arts, where frescos and altarpieces show the wilderness as metaphor for transition, and where manuscript illuminations relate this visual concept to texts. Thus, the wilderness as a landscape of personal crisis becomes in the Middle Ages a significant part of the representation of interior experience in painting and in literature.
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Clarke, Joni Adamson. "A place to see: Ecological literary theory and practice." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187115.
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"A Place to See: Ecological Literary Theory and Practice" approaches "American" literature with an inclusive interdisciplinarity that necessarily complicates traditional notions of both "earliness" and canon. In order to examine how "Nature" has been socially constructed since the seventeenth century to support colonialist objectives, I set American literature into a context which includes ancient Mayan almanacs, the Popol Vuh, early seventeenth and eighteenth century American farmer's almanacs, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu's autobiography, the 1994 Zapatista National Liberation army uprising in Mexico, and Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead. Drawing on the feminist, literary and cultural theories of Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant, and Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Edward Said, Annette Kolodny, and Joseph Meeker, I argue that contemporary Native American writers insist that readers question all previous assumptions about "Nature" as uninhabited wilderness and "nature writing" as realistic, non-fiction prose recorded in Waldenesque tranquility. Instead the work of writers such as Silko, Louise Erdrich, Simon Ortiz, and Joy Harjo is a "nature writing" which explores the interconnections among forms and systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression across their different racial, sexual, and ecological manifestations. I posit that literary critics and teachers who wish to work for a more ecologically and socially balanced world should draw on the work of all members of our discourse community in cooperative rather than competitive ways and seek to transform literary theory and practice by bringing it back into dynamic interconnection with the worlds we all live in--inescapably social and material worlds in which issues of race, class, and gender inevitably intersect in complex and multi-faceted ways with issues of natural resource exploitation and conservation.
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Lamarca, Eric Tadeu. "Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira e sua Viagem filosófica ao Rio Negro." Universidade de São Paulo, 2015. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8149/tde-15032016-155619/.
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No fim do século XVIII, ocorreu a Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro (Região Amazônica, Brasil) do naturalista Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira. Realizada entre 1783 e 1792 foi a primeira expedição científica patrocinada pelo Império Português, naquele vasto território, a qual produziu um enorme volume documental, com registros de grande riqueza e diversidade, na área da agricultura, botânica,etnologia, economia, zoologia e antropologia. No presente estudo, realizou-se uma releitura analítica da obra de Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, ou seja, a Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro, enaltecendo contextos históricos que a antecederam, bem como comparando-a com obras de viajantes, como Gabriel Soares de Sousa (1587) e André João Antonil (1711).As obras desses três autores parecem ter um papel social e econômico em comum, podendo-se dizer que seus textos têm uma razão política. Todos eles parecem ser influenciados ou motivados pelo mercantilismo. A expedição realizada por Ferreira recebeu influências da modernidade e do iluminismo, bem como das peculiaridades da reforma pombalina de Portugal.A Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro de Alexandre Ferreira da Silva é uma obra de grande importância no mundo colonial português, sendo um verdadeiro tratado de história natural, agropecuária e economia do Brasil, mas que ainda é pouco divulgado nos circuitos acadêmicos. O trabalho de um homem, servidor fiel de Sua Majestade que, com poucos recursos e uma equipe reduzida, fez o primeiro grande levantamento socioeconômico e ambiental da Amazônia brasileira.In the late XVIII century was the Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro (Amazon Region, Brazil) of the naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira. Conducted between 1783 and 1792 was the first scientific expedition sponsored by the Portuguese Empire, that vast territory, which produced a huge volume documentary with records of great wealth and diversity, in agriculture, botany, anthropology, economics, zoology and anthropology. In the present study, there was na analytical rereading the work of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, the Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro, highlighting historical contexts and comparing it to traveler works as Gabriel Soares de Sousa (1587) and André João Antonil (1711). The works of these three authors seem to have a social and economic role in common and could be said that his texts have a political reason. They all seem to be influenced or motivated by mercantilism. The expedition carried out by Ferreira received influences of modernity and the Enlightenment as well as the peculiarities of Pombal reform Portugal. The Viagem Filosófica ao Rio Negro of Alexandre Ferreira da Silva is a great work of importance in the Portuguese colonial world and is a true treatise of natural history, agriculture and Brazil\'s economy, but that is still not well known in academic circles. The work of one man, faithful servant of His Majesty that, with few resources and a reduced staff, made the first major socioeconomic and environmental survey of the Brazilian Amazon.
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Ewing, Maureen Colleen. "South African women's literature and the ecofeminist perspective." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007808.
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A social-constructionist ecofeminist perspective argues that patriarchal society separates the human (or culture) from nature, which causes a false assumption that humanity possesses the right, as a superior species, to dominate nature. This perspective integrates the domination of nature with social conflicts, including but not limited to racial discrimination, gender oppression, and class hierarchies. Understanding how these various forms of oppression interrelate forms the main goal of an ecofeminist perspective. Since the nature-culture, female-male, and whitenonwhite conflicts resonate and interlock throughout South Africa's history, socialconstructionist ecofeminism is an indispensable perspective for analysing South African literature. This thesis takes a social-constructionist ecofeminist approach and applies it to four women authors that write about South African society between the years 1860-1900. This thesis includes the following authors and their works: Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) and two of her novels, The Story of an African Farm (1883) and From Man to Man (published posthumously in 1927); Pauline Smith (1882-1959) and her novel The Beadle (1926); Dalene Matthee (1938- ) and three of her novels, Circles in a Forest (1984), Fiela's Child (1986), and The Mulberry Forest (1987); and Marguerite Poland (1950- ) and one of her novels, Shades (1993). This thesis investigates two women from the time period (Schreiner and Smith) and two women from a late twentieth century perspective (Matthee and Poland) and compares how they depict the natural environment, how they construct gender, and how they interpret class and race power struggles. This thesis concludes that the social-constructionist perspective offers unique insights into these four authors. Schreiner's novels reveal her concerns about gender and racial conflicts in South Africa and her understanding of the nature-culture dichotomy as sustained by Social Darwinism. Smith offers insights into the complex power structures in a rural Afrikaans society that keep women and nonwhite races silent. Matthee writes nature as an active participant in her novels; the social and ecological conflicts emphasise the transformation of the Knysna area. Poland explores the racial tensions, gender conflicts, and environmental concerns that preceded the South African War. Schreiner, Smith, Matthee, and Poland make up a small cross-section of South African literature, but they provide a basis for further discussing the ecofeminist perspective within a South African context.KMBT_363
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Potts, Dale E. "Woods Voices, Woods Knowledge: Work and Recreation in the Popular Literature of the Northeastern Forest, 1850-1963." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2007. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/PottsDE2007.pdf.
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Lokash, Jennifer Faith. "In sickness and in health : romantic art therapy and the return to nature." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82920.
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This thesis explores the network of relationships among health and healing, the natural environment, and poetry during the Romantic period in Britain, and thus offers a new perspective on the Romantic relation to Nature. The context for this study is both the long and varied history that links literature to ideas of health and disease, and the intersection of the late 18th- and early 19th-century discourses of holistic science and healing that emphasize the synergy between self and world and recognize that our living environments can be either hostile or congenial to body and spirit. For many Romantic poets, illness was a painful reality that became vital to their thoughts about poetry and creativity in general. Through Wordsworth's partnership with Coleridge, a vocabulary of health and disease emerges in relation to poetic production and reception that has influenced critics of the period. It constructs the "natural" as a source of health, and establishes Wordsworth and his poetic celebrations of the therapeutic potential of nature as the often problematic legacy both for Coleridge and for second generation poets like Byron and Shelley. While composing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto III, Byron tests Wordsworth's notion that immersion in the natural world can be spiritually therapeutic from the point of view of poetic production. The intensity of Byron's bodily existence, however, prevents him from fully experiencing the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of Wordsworthian nature. As his attempts to disengage the spirit from the body by meditating on nature actually have the reverse effect of bringing him more in touch with his physical identity, he must reject Wordsworth's methodology as a possible vehicle for healing. In refiguring Wordsworth's ideas about "taste," Shelley conceives of his poetry as healthy food for thought. His frequently used metaphors of "literature as food" have their source in his attitudes towards intake first exp
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Potter, Emily Claire. "Disconcerting ecologies : representations of non-indigenous belonging in contemporary Australian literature and cultural discourse." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2003. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09php865.pdf.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-325) Specific concern is the poetic, as well as literal, significance given to the environment, and in particular to land, as a measure of belonging in Australia. Environment is explored in the context of ecologies, offered here as an alternative configuration of the nation, and in which the subject, through human and non-human environmental relations, can be culturally and spatially positioned. Argues that both environment and ecology are narrowly defined in dominant discourses that pursue an ideal, certain and authentic belonging for non-indigenous Australians.
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Cieplinski, Marybeth E. "The Lifespan of Chickadees." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1397818803.
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MacKenzie, Garry Ross. "Landscapes in modern poetry : gardens, forests, rivers, islands." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5910.
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This thesis considers a selection of modern landscape poetry from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that this poetry demonstrates how the term landscape might be re-imagined in relation to contemporary environmental concerns. Each chapter discusses poetic responses to a different kind of landscape: gardens, forests, rivers and islands. Chapter One explores how, in the poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Douglas Dunn, Louise Glück and David Harsent, gardens are culturally constructed landscapes in which ideas of self, society and environment are contemplated; I ask whether gardening provides a positive example of how people might interact with the natural world. My second chapter demonstrates that for Sorley MacLean, W.S. Merwin, Susan Stewart and Kathleen Jamie, forests are sites of memory and sustainable ‘dwelling', but that deforestation threatens both the ecology and the culture of these landscapes. Chapter Three compares river poems by Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald, considering their differing approaches to river sources, mystical immersion in nature, water pollution and poetic experimentation; I discuss how in W.S. Graham's poetry the sea provides a complex image of the phenomenal world similar to Oswald's river. The final chapter examines the extent to which islands in poetry are pastoral landscapes and environmental utopias, looking in particular at poems by Dunn, Robin Robertson, Iain Crichton Smith and Jen Hadfield. I reflect upon the potential for island poetry to embrace narratives of globalisation as well as localism, and situate the work of George Mackay Brown and Robert Alan Jamieson within this context. I engage with a range of ecocritical positions in my readings of these poets and argue that the linguistic creativity, formal inventiveness and self-reflexivity of poetry constitute a distinctive contribution to contemporary understandings of landscape and the environment.
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Liston, Andrew Adams. "The ecological voice in recent German-Swiss prose." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11287.
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This thesis seeks to investigate the ecological theme in German-Swiss prose of the last thirty years. The role of nature has understandably always been significant in Swiss literature. In a nation that has eked out its living, in such an impressive and violent landscape, there is of necessity a highly developed awareness of the environment. Furthermore, the close relationship between mankind and the environment is inherently ambiguous, with each acting alternately as curse and blessing to the other. The bond between people and geography is made all the more vital in the Alps, where existence is under the constant threat of avalanches and landslides. In light of this heightened environmental sensibility, it is unsurprising that, with the growing profile of ecological debate in general, Swiss writers should demonstrate an acute cognisance of the significance of ecological problems. The notion of an ecological voice takes the discussion further. The question is posed whether these works merely represent a reflection of societal concern for the environment, or whether literary responses may constitute solutions. This investigation therefore contributes both to literary criticism on Swiss writing and to the understanding of the role of conceptualisation in finding solutions to ecological problems. To explore and analyse these ideas, this thesis considers a representatively broad spectrum of differing responses to ecological crisis. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of recent Swiss ‘Öko-Literatur', but instead to be an investigation of the variety of narrative strategies employed in this period of growing ecological awareness.
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Wallace, Linda M. "Negotiating place, explorations of identity and nature in select novels by contemporary Canadian women writers." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0018/MQ49460.pdf.
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Margrave, Christie L. "Women and nature in the works of French female novelists, 1789-1815." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6391.
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On account of their supposed link to nature, women in post-revolutionary France were pigeonholed into a very restrictive sphere that centred around domesticity and submission to their male counterparts. Yet this thesis shows how a number of women writers – Cottin, Genlis, Krüdener, Souza and Staël – re-appropriate nature in order to reclaim the voice denied to them and to their sex by the society in which they lived. The five chapters of this thesis are structured to follow a number of critical junctures in the life of an adult woman: marriage, authorship, motherhood, madness and mortality. The opening sections to each chapter show why these areas of life generated particular problems for women at this time. Then, through in-depth analysis of primary texts, the chapters function in two ways. They examine how female novelists craft natural landscapes to expose and comment on the problems male-dominant society causes women to experience in France at this time. In addition, they show how female novelists employ descriptions of nature to highlight women's responses to the pain and frustration that social issues provoke for them. Scholars have thus far overlooked the natural settings within the works of female novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, a re-evaluation of these natural settings, as suggested by this thesis, brings a new dimension to our appreciation of the works of these women writers and of their position as critics of contemporary society. Ultimately, an escape into nature on the part of female protagonists in these novels becomes the means by which their creators confront the everyday reality faced by women in the turbulent socio-historical era which followed the Revolution.
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Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.
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Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.
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Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) ; and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.
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Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the