Introduction: American literature and environmental politics. Chapter 1: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the formation of American literature's core environmental values -- Chapter 2: James Fenimore Cooper, canon formation, and American literature's erasure of environmental anxiety -- Chapter 3: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the American canon's erasure of material nature -- Chapter 4: Willa Cather and John Steinbeck, environmental schizophrenia and monstrous ecology -- Chapter 5: Zora Neale Hurston, the power of Harlem, and the promise of Florida -- Afterword: Ernest Hemingway, and American literature's legacy of environmental disengagement. |