The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism

by Alex Hunt, Elizabeth Abele, Wes Berry, Paul Chafe, Hal Crimmel

Overview

This edited collection focuses on Annie Proulx's striking attention to geography, place, landscape, and local environments. Contributors consider Proulx's particular landscapes_particularly those of Wyoming, New England, Texas, and Newfoundland_and the issues surrounding the significance of these regions and regionalism in contemporary culture and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739123942
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	12/16/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	229
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Alex Hunt is associate professor in the English department at West Texas A&M University.

Table of Contents

1 Table of Contents 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Introduction: The Insistence of Geography in the Writing of Annie Proulx Part 4 I. Orientations Chapter 5 1. The Influence of the Annales School on Annie Proulx's Geographical Imagination Chapter 6 2. Proulx and the Postmodern Hyperreal Chapter 7 3. Drinking the Elixir of Ownership: Pilgrims and Improvers in the Landscapes of Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole and The Shipping News Chapter 8 4. Postnational United States Regional Hinterlands: Proulx's Ethnic Working-Class Communities in Accordion Crimes Part 9 II. Geographies Chapter 10 5. Born Under a Bad Sign: The Question of Geographical Determinism in the Hardscrabble Northern Badlands of Heart Songs and Other Stories Chapter 11 6. The Corpse in the Stone Wall: Annie Proulx's Ironic New England Chapter 12 7. "All the Qualities o' the Isle": The Shipping News as Island Myth Chapter 13 8. Annie Proulx's Wyoming: Geographical Determinism, Landscape, and Caricature Chapter 14 9. Westward Proulx: The Resistant Landscape of Close Range: Wyoming Stories and That Old Ace in the Hole Part 15 III. Directions Chapter 16 10. Landed Bodies: Geography and Disability in The Shipping News Chapter 17 11. The Location of Immigration: Itinerant Communities and Cultural Hybridity in Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes Chapter 18 12. Brokeback Mountain as Progressive Narrative and Cinematic Vision: Landscape, Emotion, and the Denial of Domesticity Chapter 19 13. Capitalism vs. Localism: Economies of Scale in Annie Proulx's Postcards and That Old Ace in the Hole Chapter 20 14. The Ecology of Narrative: Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole as Critical Regionalist Fiction Chapter 21 Afterword: Red Desert: The History of a Place and Annie Proulx as Environmental Historian 22 Bibliography 23 Index 24 Contributors

What People are Saying About This

William R. Handley

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx’s idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Nova Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx’s work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx’s readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

Eric H. Patterson

Alex Hunt and the contributors he has brought together provide a valuable array of critical perspectives on one of the most significant aspects of the fiction of Annie Proulx, the human relationship to the land. Their volume serves to illuminate many facets of Proulx's construction of the complex, difficult, ironic connections between what people often may expect of the landscapes of North America, and the land itself. They not only offer important insights into all of Proulx's work, but a useful general introduction to current critical approaches to understanding literary representations of our relations to our environment.

Editorial Reviews

This book is not only a timely intervention in emerging studies of Proulx; it furthermore crosses the sometimes divisive nature of academic disciplines and will be valuable to readers from varied fields such as geography, history and literature.

Great Plains Quarterly

The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism, edited by Alex Hunt, analyzes Proulx from many angles.

Winter 2010 Western American Literature

The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism, edited by Alex Hunt, analyzes Proulx from many angles.

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx's idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Nova Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx's work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx's readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

Alex Hunt and the contributors he has brought together provide a valuable array of critical perspectives on one of the most significant aspects of the fiction of Annie Proulx, the human relationship to the land. Their volume serves to illuminate many facets of Proulx's construction of the complex, difficult, ironic connections between what people often may expect of the landscapes of North America, and the land itself. They not only offer important insights into all of Proulx's work, but a useful general introduction to current critical approaches to understanding literary representations of our relations to our environment.

This book is not only a timely intervention in emerging studies of Proulx; it furthermore crosses the sometimes divisive nature of academic disciplines and will be valuable to readers from varied fields such as geography, history and literature.

From the Publisher

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx’s idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Nova Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx’s work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx’s readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

William R. Handley

Alex Hunt and the contributors he has brought together provide a valuable array of critical perspectives on one of the most significant aspects of the fiction of Annie Proulx, the human relationship to the land. Their volume serves to illuminate many facets of Proulx's construction of the complex, difficult, ironic connections between what people often may expect of the landscapes of North America, and the land itself. They not only offer important insights into all of Proulx's work, but a useful general introduction to current critical approaches to understanding literary representations of our relations to our environment.

Eric H. Patterson

The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism, edited by Alex Hunt, analyzes Proulx from many angles.

Western American Literature