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 5
... power of the farm bloc in Congress, in the special economic favor shown to “farming” through government subsidies, and in state electoral systems that allow the rural population to retain a share of political power grossly out of ...
... power of the farm bloc in Congress, in the special economic favor shown to “farming” through government subsidies, and in state electoral systems that allow the rural population to retain a share of political power grossly out of ...
Page 6
... power of this sentiment is even more obvious. The mass media cater to a mawkish taste for retreat into the primitive or rural felicity exemplified by TV westerns and Norman Rockwell magazine covers. Perhaps the most convincing testimony ...
... power of this sentiment is even more obvious. The mass media cater to a mawkish taste for retreat into the primitive or rural felicity exemplified by TV westerns and Norman Rockwell magazine covers. Perhaps the most convincing testimony ...
Page 15
... machine into a far more complex state of mind. Our sense of its evocative power is borne out by the fact that variants of the Sleepy Hollow episode have appeared everywhere in American writing since the 1840's. We recall the scene in ...
... machine into a far more complex state of mind. Our sense of its evocative power is borne out by the fact that variants of the Sleepy Hollow episode have appeared everywhere in American writing since the 1840's. We recall the scene in ...
Page 29
... power of his material, and that power unquestionably is heightened by the larger, political implications of the machine image. Emerson makes the point this way: the serious artist, he says, “must employ the symbols in use in his day and ...
... power of his material, and that power unquestionably is heightened by the larger, political implications of the machine image. Emerson makes the point this way: the serious artist, he says, “must employ the symbols in use in his day and ...
Page 32
... power had been ravaging the countryside throughout recorded history. After ... power, a power that does not remain confined to the traditional boundaries of the ... machine we must appreciate the intensity of his feeling for its opposite ...
... power had been ravaging the countryside throughout recorded history. After ... power, a power that does not remain confined to the traditional boundaries of the ... machine we must appreciate the intensity of his feeling for its opposite ...
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