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
Results 1-5 of 36
Page 3
... poetic fantasy. Soon the 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 ...
... poetic fantasy. Soon the 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 ...
Page 18
... poets” of the previous century. In 1844, as it happens, Wordsworth wrote a sonnet protesting against the building of a railroad through the lake country. It begins: “Is then no nook of English ground secure / From rash assault ...
... poets” of the previous century. In 1844, as it happens, Wordsworth wrote a sonnet protesting against the building of a railroad through the lake country. It begins: “Is then no nook of English ground secure / From rash assault ...
Page 19
... poet, Virgil's Eclogues are the true fountainhead of the pastoral strain in our literature. For one thing, in these poems Virgil (as one classical scholar puts it) “discovered” Arcadia. It is here that he created the symbolic landscape ...
... poet, Virgil's Eclogues are the true fountainhead of the pastoral strain in our literature. For one thing, in these poems Virgil (as one classical scholar puts it) “discovered” Arcadia. It is here that he created the symbolic landscape ...
Page 20
... poet himself) so that military veterans might be rewarded with the seized land. This display of political power no doubt intensified Virgil's feeling for the land as a symbolic repository of value; at the same time it compelled him to ...
... poet himself) so that military veterans might be rewarded with the seized land. This display of political power no doubt intensified Virgil's feeling for the land as a symbolic repository of value; at the same time it compelled him to ...
Page 22
... poet in disguise — Tityrus represents Virgil himself—he has a stake in both worlds. In the first eclogue nothing makes the mediating character of the pastoral ideal so clear as the spatial symbolism in which it is expressed. The good ...
... poet in disguise — Tityrus represents Virgil himself—he has a stake in both worlds. In the first eclogue nothing makes the mediating character of the pastoral ideal so clear as the spatial symbolism in which it is expressed. The good ...
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