Conserving Words: How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement

by Philippon, Daniel J.

• ISBN13: 9780820327594
• ISBN10: 082032759X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Conserving Wordslooks at five authors of seminal works of nature writing who also founded or revitalized important environmental organizations: Theodore Roosevelt and the Boone and Crockett Club, Mabel Osgood Wright and the National Audubon Society, John Muir and the Sierra Club, Aldo Leopold and the Wilderness Society, and Edward Abbey and Earth First! These writers used powerfully evocative and galvanizing metaphors for nature, metaphors that Daniel J. Philippon calls "conserving" words: frontier (Roosevelt), garden (Wright), park (Muir), wilderness (Leopold), and utopia (Abbey). Integrating literature, history, biography, and philosophy, this ambitious study explores how "conserving" words enabled narratives to convey environmental values as they explained how human beings should interact with the nonhuman world.

Author Biography

Daniel J. Philippon is an associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he is also director of the Program in Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Ethics. He is editor of a critical edition of Mabel Osgood Wright's The Friendship of Nature and coeditor of the anthology The Height of Our Mountains.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: The Ecology of Influence	p. 1
Preserving the Pieces: Progressive Conservation
The Closing of the Frontier: Theodore Roosevelt and the Boone and Crockett Club	p. 33
The Garden, You, and I: Mabel Osgood Wright and the National Audubon Society	p. 72
Our National Parks: John Muir and the Sierra Club	p. 106
Protecting the Planet: Modern Environmentalism
The Call of the Wild: Aldo Leopold and the Wilderness Society	p. 159
Toward Ecotopia: Edward Abbey and Earth First!	p. 219
Conclusion: The Island as Metaphor	p. 266
List of Abbreviations	p. 279
Notes	p. 281
Works Cited	p. 317
Index	p. 359
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