Settling the Mind in Wilderness
In this course we will examine writing about nature and place in four genres—poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and film. Our main focus will be on two moments of great achievement in nature writing: the turn of the twenty-first century in North America and the seventh and eight centuries in T’ang Dynasty China. We will explore why these two periods, together with the Upper Paleolithic and the Industrial Revolution in England, were moments of intense human artistic interest in the natural world. We will pay particular attention in the course to lyric poetry and the personal essay, exploring the ways in which these forms of writing are most attuned to the wild in the ancient Asian and recent North American traditions, and asking why this might be the case. 3 hrs. sem.