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>Noble designs of nature and nation: God, science, and sentiment in women's representations of the American landscape (Almira Phelps, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Mary Treat).
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Noble designs of nature and nation: God, science, and sentiment in women's representations of the American landscape (Almira Phelps, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Mary Treat).
This project focuses on representations of nature in the writings of nineteenth-century women authors and examines the languages and modes of perception available to women who use the natural world as a platform for discussing issues of morality, history, and the nation. Sentimental flower language books are often considered the only type of writing about nature produced by women in nineteenth-century America. In fact, another tradition also exists, one in which women challenge sentimental modes and seek instead to present a more scientific, rational portrait of nature. To establish the shape of this tradition, the dissertation investigates the intersections of natural theology, scientific discourse, and picturesque aesthetics in a range of texts, such as botanical manuals, flower language books, travel narratives, and seasonal journals, by writers including Almira Phelps, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and Mary Treat. The discussion of trends in women's nature writing is contextualized by looking at key male philosophers, scientists, and writers who influence the writers under discussion: Locke, Linnaeus, Goethe, Humboldt, Darwin, Emerson, and Thoreau.; Chapter One analyzes Phelps's best-selling Familiar Lectures on Botany and outlines the contours of botanical education in the early nineteenth century. Lockean empiricism, which privileges sensory experience forms the epistemological foundations of a woman's interaction with the natural world. Subsequent chapters investigate the various languages (scientific, moral, aesthetic), and perceptual stances (objective, subjective) that women use to record their experiences of nature. Chapter Two analyzes Fuller's travel narrative Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 and shows Fuller exploring the reciprocal relationship between humans and their environment. Chapter Three investigates Rural Hours, a seasonal daybook in which Cooper the limits of the languages available to her to describe nature---religious, scientific, and local---before she settles on the language of aesthetics to resolve her perceptual crisis. Chapter Four examines Treat's Home Studies in Nature, a collection of scientific nature essays written in the post-Darwinian landscape.; By examining texts about the natural world that American women produce throughout the nineteenth century, I show how instead of turning away from nature once its designed coherency begins to crumble, these writers construct new definitions and models of home and community as guides for human interaction with their environment.
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机译：该项目着重于19世纪女性作家的作品中对自然的再现，并考察了以自然界为平台讨论道德，历史和民族问题的女性所能使用的语言和感知方式。在十九世纪的美国，感性的花卉语言书籍通常被认为是女性创作的关于自然的唯一文字。实际上，还存在另一种传统，在这种传统中，妇女挑战感性的方式，而试图表现出更加科学，理性的自然肖像。为了确立这种传统的形态，本文研究了包括阿尔米拉·菲尔普斯（Almira Phelps）在内的作家在一系列文本中的自然神学，科学话语和风景如画的美学的交集，例如植物手册，花卉语言书籍，旅行叙事和时令杂志。 ，玛格丽特·富勒，苏珊·费尼莫尔·库珀和玛丽·特雷斯特。通过研究影响讨论中的作家的主要男性哲学家，科学家和作家，对女性自然写作趋势的讨论进行了背景讨论：洛克，林奈，歌德，洪堡，达尔文，艾默生和梭罗。第一章分析了菲尔普斯最畅销的植物学讲座，并概述了19世纪初期的植物教育概况。洛克恩经验主义赋予感官经验以特权，形成了女人与自然世界互动的认识论基础。随后的章节将研究女性用来记录自然经历的各种语言（科学，道德，审美）和感性立场（客观，主观）。第二章分析了富勒（Fuller）在1843年的《湖中的夏日》（Summer on the Lakes）的旅行叙事，并展示了富勒在探索人类与环境之间的相互关系。第三章研究《乡村时光》，这是一本季节性的日记，在她选择美学语言解决她的知觉危机之前，库珀限制了她可以用来描述自然的语言（宗教，科学和当地语言）。第四章探讨了特雷特的《自然界家庭研究》，这是一本用后达尔文式的风景写的科学自然论文集。通过研究有关美国女性在整个19世纪所产生的自然世界的文字，我展示了一旦其设计的一致性开始崩溃，这些作家如何而不是摆脱自然，而是构建新的家庭和社区定义和模型，作为人类与自然互动的指南。他们的环境。
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