Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

Study Questions

Daniel G. Payne

Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics

Hanover , N.H. : University Press of New England , 1996.

Introduction

1. How does Payne summarize the “predominant American worldview” (2)?

2. What are the two environmental reform movements? How are they the same and different? What are the basic motivation and the worldviews that underlie each? (2-3) Do you know the historical eras of the two movements and what helped give rise to the two movements?

3. What is the “most remarkable aspect of environmental reform” (3)? What have nature writers done? What are the “three rhetorical tasks” (4)? What is the disagreement about the role of nature writing (4)?

4. According to Roderick Nash, what are the two components of environmentalism (5)?

5. What are the commonality and the differences between conservation and preservation? (5-6)

Terms to know:

• anthropocentric & biocentric (3)
  conservation & preservation (5)

Chapter 1: Early Responses to the Wilderness

1. Make a list the diverse variety of views of the land among the colonists. Also, what were the various purposes and agendas the colonists had?

2. What were the colonists’ attitude toward Native Americans?

3. What happened to the land during early colonization? What were the colonists’ responses to those changes and to the idea of conservation? (13-18) Do you see any of these responses and attitudes still present in today’s society?

4. What were the early attempts at conservation? What is Payne’s evaluation of them? (16-17)

5. What were the various the new, positive attitudes toward nature, from Jonathan Edwards to Frederick Turner? What attitudes toward wilderness were involved? How were they related to social and political issues? (17-23)

6. Who was William Bartram and what were his attitudes toward nature? (18-19)

7. What is Payne’s conclusion about early American literature and environmental reform? (24)

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