The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in AmericaFor over four decades, Leo Marx's work has focused on the relationship between technology and culture in 19th- and 20th-century America. His research helped to define--and continues to give depth to--the area of American studies concerned with the links between scientific and technological advances, and the way society and culture both determine these links. The Machine in the Garden fully examines the difference between the "pastoral" and "progressive" ideals which characterized early 19th-century American culture, and which ultimately evolved into the basis for much of the environmental and nuclear debates of contemporary society. This new edition is appearing in celebration of the 35th anniversary of Marx's classic text. It features a new afterword by the author on the process of writing this pioneering book, a work that all but founded the discipline now called American Studies. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... beginning for Western society. In both forms— one literary and the other in essence political — the ideal has figured in the American view of life which is, in the widest sense, the subject of this book. 3 My purpose is to describe and ...
... beginning for Western society. In both forms— one literary and the other in essence political — the ideal has figured in the American view of life which is, in the widest sense, the subject of this book. 3 My purpose is to describe and ...
Page 18
... beginnings of industrialization. In England, as early as the 1780's, writers had been repelled by the ugliness, squalor, and suffering associated with the new factory system, and their revulsion had sharpened the taste, already strong ...
... beginnings of industrialization. In England, as early as the 1780's, writers had been repelled by the ugliness, squalor, and suffering associated with the new factory system, and their revulsion had sharpened the taste, already strong ...
Page 32
... beginning so much as the decisive turning point of a long story. It would be more accurate, then, to say that Hawthorne, in seizing upon the image of the railroad as counterforce, is re-shaping a conventional design to meet the singular ...
... beginning so much as the decisive turning point of a long story. It would be more accurate, then, to say that Hawthorne, in seizing upon the image of the railroad as counterforce, is re-shaping a conventional design to meet the singular ...
Page 36
... beginning of civilization. Of course the Indians also were a source of fascination. But their simple ways merely confirmed the identification of the New World with primal nature. They fit perfectly into the pic. ture of America as a ...
... beginning of civilization. Of course the Indians also were a source of fascination. But their simple ways merely confirmed the identification of the New World with primal nature. They fit perfectly into the pic. ture of America as a ...
Page 45
... threatened to obliterate much of what they already had achieved. The paradox was to be a cardinal subject of our national literature, and beginning in the nineteenth century our best writers were able to Shakespeare's American Fable 45.
... threatened to obliterate much of what they already had achieved. The paradox was to be a cardinal subject of our national literature, and beginning in the nineteenth century our best writers were able to Shakespeare's American Fable 45.
Contents
3 | |
34 | |
The Garden | 73 |
The Machine | 145 |
Two Kingdoms of Force | 227 |
Epilogue The Garden of Ashes | 354 |
AFTERWORD | 367 |
NOTES | 387 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 407 |
INDEX | 409 |
Other editions - View all
The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America Leo Marx Limited preview - 2000 |
The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America Leo Marx Limited preview - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
Adams Ahab Ahab's American Arcadia attitude beauty beginning Beverley Beverley's Caliban called Carlyle century chapter civilization Clemens Coxe culture describes dream eclogue economic Emerson episode Ethan Brand Europe European F. O. Matthiessen fable fact factories farmer feeling forces garden Gatsby Gonzalo green Hawthorne Hawthorne's Henry Nash Smith Huck Huckleberry Finn human idea idyll imagination industrial Ishmael island Jefferson kind land language Leo Marx letter literary literature machine power machinery manufactures Mark Twain meaning mechanical Melville Melville's metaphor middle landscape mind Moby-Dick mode moral myth native nature Nick pastoral ideal Pastoral Poetry poem poet poetry political primitivist progress Prospero raft railroad rhetoric romantic rural says scene seems sense sentimental Shakespeare Sleepy Hollow social society Starbuck steam symbolic Tempest Tench Coxe theme thing Thoreau thought tion tone toral ture Virgin Virginia voyage Walden Walker whale wild wilderness words writers York