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
... dream of a retreat to an oasis of harmony and joy was removed from its traditional literary context. It was embodied in various utopian schemes for making America the site of a new beginning for Western society. In both forms— one ...
... dream of a retreat to an oasis of harmony and joy was removed from its traditional literary context. It was embodied in various utopian schemes for making America the site of a new beginning for Western society. In both forms— one ...
Page 11
... dreams, a diffuse nostalgia, and a naïve, anarchic primitivism, yet it also is the source of writing that is invaluable for its power to enrich and clarify our experience. Where, then, shall we locate the point of divergence between ...
... dreams, a diffuse nostalgia, and a naïve, anarchic primitivism, yet it also is the source of writing that is invaluable for its power to enrich and clarify our experience. Where, then, shall we locate the point of divergence between ...
Page 15
... dream. What begins as a conventional tribute to the pleasures of withdrawal from the world — a simple pleasure fantasy—is transformed by the interruption of the machine into a far more complex state of mind. Our sense of its evocative ...
... dream. What begins as a conventional tribute to the pleasures of withdrawal from the world — a simple pleasure fantasy—is transformed by the interruption of the machine into a far more complex state of mind. Our sense of its evocative ...
Page 24
... dreams and pastoral poems. Then, too, we sometimes confuse matters even more by taking the word completely out of its literary context to describe our experience of the real world. We say of a pleasing stretch of country that it is a ...
... dreams and pastoral poems. Then, too, we sometimes confuse matters even more by taking the word completely out of its literary context to describe our experience of the real world. We say of a pleasing stretch of country that it is a ...
Page 25
... dream have been certain stylized tokens of mortality. We should understand that the counterforce may impinge upon the pastoral landscape either from the side bordering upon intractable nature or the side facing * The scope of the design ...
... dream have been certain stylized tokens of mortality. We should understand that the counterforce may impinge upon the pastoral landscape either from the side bordering upon intractable nature or the side facing * The scope of the design ...
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