Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature

摘要

Geoff Hamilton and Brian Jones, two Toronto-based researchers, have compiled the Encyclopedia of the Environment in American Literature, a reference guide to poetry, fiction, drama (including film), and nonfiction writing related to ecology, the environment, and, more broadly, the natural surroundings in the Americas. The editors indicated that the authors and works were selected "not for their special sensitivity to or sympathy with the environment, but for their importance to America's historical conception of that environment, and of itself" (p. 3). Given the recent interest in ecocritism in literary studies and interdisciplinary environmental studies in the sciences as well as the humanities, this encyclopedia is a timely resource that will benefit instructors designing courses, students researching "nature writing" from different eras of American history, and readers in search of literary texts on the land and its people in the territorial United States.