Abstract
In the beginning, epic is not a popular genre as much as epic is the whole of popular, orally based literature.2 When is “the beginning?” Different in historical times for distinct peoples, it comes when a community can recognize itself. Usually this occurs in looking back on its origins, although not all early epics are origin myths in the strictest senses.3 For ancient Greeks, the epic period happened more than two-and-a-half millennia ago; for current Finns, it transpired less than two centuries ago. By contrast, no popular genres start to take shape as conventional families of dramas and narratives until the eve of electronic times. Horror, thriller, romance, science fiction, and the rest typically sprawl across mass-disseminated literature plus electronic media such as cinema and television. In consequence, it is not surprising that epic long remained an impulse across many other genres more than a popular form in its own right for electronic cultures. Still epic has been consolidating itself as a specific genre for the better part of a century now, even as it functions also as something of an Ur genre to inspirit most of our other popular forms.
The Homeric journey, grounded in the wish to return home, is at once the most venerable of all narrative templates and, as The Way Back demonstrates, one of the trickiest to dramatize. Anthony Minghella hit the same problem in Cold Mountain: an odyssey, when you get down to it, is just one damn thing after another.1
—Anthony Lane
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Notes
Anthony Lane, “Miles to Go: The Way Back and Biutiful,” New Yorker, 86, 46, January 31, 2011, pp. 82–83, on p. 82.
See Peter Toohey, Reading Epic: An Introduction to the Ancient Narratives, London, Routledge, 1992.
See Franco Moretti, Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez, trans. Quinton Hoare, London, Verso, 1996;
Margaret Beissinger, Jane Tylus, and Susanne Wofford, eds., Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999;
Dean A. Miller, The Epic Hero, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
See Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, New York, Random House, 2002.
See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959;
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, New York, Viking Press (1963), expanded edition, 1968.
Also see John S. Nelson, “Political Foundations for Rhetoric of Inquiry,” in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Enquiry, Herbert W. Simons, ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 258–289;
John S.Nelson, “Commerce among the Archipelagos: Rhetoric of Inquiry as a Practice of Coherent Education,” in The Core and the Canon, L. Robert Stevens, G. L. Seligmann, and Julian Long, eds., Denton, TX, University of North Texas Press, 1993, pp. 78–100.
See Robert E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Cultures of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1996.
See Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur, Norman Lorre Goodrich, ed. (1485), 1963;
T. H. White, The Once and Future King, New York, Putnam, 1939.
See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Detroit, Black and Red (1967), 1977;
Hal Foster, Recordings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, Port Townsend, WA, Bay Press, 1985;
Thomas Shevory, Notorious H. L. V: The Media Spectacle of Nushawn Williams, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2004;
Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie, Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press (2004), expanded edition, 2007.
See Barry Keith Grant, ed., Film Genre Reader, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986;
Rick Altman, Film/Genre, London, British Film Institute, 1999.
See John S. Nelson and G. R. Boynton, Video Rhetorics: Televised Advertising in American Politics, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1997.
See John S. Nelson, “Horror Films Face Political Evils in Everyday Life,” Political Communication 22, no. 3 (July–September 2005): 381–386.
See John S. Nelson, “Conspiracy as a Hollywood Trope for System,” Political Communication 20, no. 4 (October–December 2003): 499–503.
See Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996;
Will Wright, The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 2001;
Robert B. Pippin, Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010.
See Peter A. French, The Virtues of Vengeance, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2001.
See Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 1998.
See John S. Nelson and G. R. Boynton, “Arguing War: Global Television against American Cinema,” in Arguing Communication and Culture, G. Thomas Goodnight, ed., Washington, DC, National Communication Association, 2002, pp. 571–577.
See Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Richard Howard, trans., Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press (1970) (1973), 1975;
W R. Irwin, The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1976;
Christine Brooke-Rose, A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
See Stephen King, Danse Macabre, New York, Berkley Books, 1981;
Douglas E. Winter, Faces of Fear, New York, Berkley Books, 1985, p. 62;
Darryl Jones, Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film, London, Arnold, 2002;
Stephen Prince, ed., The Horror Film, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2004.
See John S. Nelson, “Popular Rhetorics for Non-Linear Politics: Movements, Styles, Systems, and More,” in Concerning Argument, Scott Jacobs, ed., Washington, DC, National Communication Association, 2009, pp. 572–579.
See David Worcester, The Art of Satire, New York, Russell and Russell, 1940;
Alan Reynolds Thompson, The Dry Mock, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1948.
Mock epics from Mel Brooks include History of the World: Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).
Mock epics from Monty Python include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), The Meaning of Life (1983), and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). The recent surge in epics is the satirical target of Epic Movie (2007) from Jason Friedburg and Aaron Seltzer.
See Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs, Subliminal Politics: Myths and Mythmakers in America, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1980;
Bruno Bettelheim, “The Art of Moving Pictures: Man, Superman, and Myth,” Harper’s Magazine 263, 1577, October 1981, pp. 80–83;
Geoffrey Hill, Illuminating Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film, Boston, Shambhala, 1992.
See Hendrik Hertzberg, “Upset Victory: Primary Colors Triumphs Over the Old Politics of Hollywood,” New Yorker 74, no. 5, March 23, 1998, pp. 86–90.
See Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, C. B. Macpherson, ed., New York, Penguin Books (1651), 1968;
Thomas Hobbes, in Man and Citizen, Bernard Gert, ed., Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1972.
Also see Thomas A. Spragens, The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes, Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1973;
Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996;
Ted Miller, Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, New York, New American Library, revised ed., 1963.
Also see Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992;
Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
See Margaret Canovan, Populism, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981;
Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press (1995), revised ed., 1998;
Ernest Laclau, On Populist Reason, New York, Verso, 2005;
Charles Postel, The Populist Vision, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, Francis Golffing, trans., Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1956;
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, R. J. Hollingdale, trans., Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1979;
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, R. J. Hollingdale, trans., Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1961;
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, R. J. Hollingdale, trans., Baltimore, Penguin Books (1889 and 1885), 1968;
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, Peter Preuss, trans., Indianapolis, Hackett, 1982;
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Walter Kaufmann, ed., Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale, trans., New York, Random House, 1967.
Also see Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transformation, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975;
Daniel W Conway, Nietzsche and the Political, London, Routledge, 1997.
See Frederick M. Dolan and Thomas L. Dumm, eds., Rhetorical Republic: Governing Representations in American Politics, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.
See Michael Moorcock, Wizardry & Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy, Austin, TX, MonkeyBrain, 2004.
An especially provocative take on opera treats it as passionate speech; see Stanley Cavell, A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994.
See James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, New York, Penguin Books, 1987;
James Gleick, Nature’s Chaos, New York, Basic Books, 1990.
Also see N. Katherine Hayles, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1990;
N. Katherine Hayles, ed., Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1975;
Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, in three volumes, 1994;
Philip Pettit, Republicanism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997;
Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
On postwestern settings and responses, see Glenn Tinder, The Crisis of Political Imagination, New York, Scribner, 1964;
John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979;
David Morley and Kevin Robins, eds., Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes, and Cultural Boundaries, London, Routledge, 1995, pp. 187–228.
See John S. Nelson, Tropes of Politic: Science, Rhetory, Rhetoric, Action, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, pp. 138–141.
See Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, New American Library, (1889), 1963. When I point out that the 1949 movie stars Bing Crosby, you won’t be surprised to learn that it makes no discernible effort to match the novel’s epic sensibility.
See Christopher Matthews, Hardball, New York, HarperCollins, 1988;
Christopher Matthews, Life’s a Campaign, New York, Random House, 2007.
Also see John S. Nelson, “Prudence as Republican Politics in American Popular Culture,” in Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice, Robert Hariman, ed., University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, pp. 229–257.
See Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment—Images of Power in Early America, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1984.
See Carl G. Jung, in Psyche and Symbol, Violet S. de Laszlo, ed., Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1958;
Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By, New York, Viking Press, 1972;
Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz, Projecting the Shadow: The Cyborg Hero in American Film, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995.
See Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Powerful, New York, Random House, 1970;
Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood Is Forever, New York, Washington Square Press, 2003.
See Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988;
Robert Hariman, “No One Is in Charge Here: Ryszard Kapuscinski Anatomy of the Courtly Style,” Political Style: The Artistry of Power, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 51–94;
Adam Gopnik, “Display Cases,” New Yorker 75, no. 9–10 (April 26 and May 1, 1999), pp. 176–184. Also see John S. Nelson, “All’s Fair: Love, War, Politics, and Other Spectacles,” Poroi 4, no. 2 0uly 2005), http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/poroi/papers/nelson050701.html.
See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978, in two volumes;
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, trans., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press (1979), 1984;
Jim Collins, Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism, New York, Routledge, 1989;
Jonathan Bignell, Postmodern Media Culture, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New York, World, 1949.
On contrasts among bourgeois, pagan, and Christian virtues, see D. N. McCloskey, “Bourgeois Virtues,” American Scholar 63, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 177–191;
D. N. McCloskey, The Vices of Economists—The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1996;
D. N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006.
See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Louis MacNeice, trans., New York, Oxford University Press, 1951;
Marshall Berman, “Goethe’s Faust: The Tragedy of Development,” All That Is Solid Melts into Air, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1982, pp. 37–86;
Harry Redner, In the Beginning Was the Deed, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982.
See Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, H. T Lowe-Porter, trans., New York, Random House, 1948.
Also see John S. Nelson, “Toltechs, Aztechs, and the Art of the Possible,” Polity 8, no. 1 (Fall 1975): 80–116.
Sheldon S. Wolin, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1970, p. 4.
See Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs, Subliminal Politics: Myths and Mythmakers in America, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1980;
Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism, New York, Oxford University Press (1974, 1979), 3rd ed., 1985;
David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989.
See Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977;
Eric A. Havelock, The literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences, 1982;
Eric Havelock, The Muse learns to Write, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986;
Walter J. Ong, Orality and literacy, New York, Methuen, 1982.
See Kiku Adatto, “Mythic Pictures: The Maverick Heroes in American Movies,” Picture Perfect: The Art and Artifice of Public Image Making, New York, Basic Books, 1993, pp. 124–166.
See Isadore Traschen, “Pure and Ironic Idealism,” South Atlantic Quarterly 59, no. 2 (Spring 1960): 163–170;
Elizabeth Markovits, The Politics of Sincerity: Plato, Frank Speech, and Democratic Judgment, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008, pp. 47–122.
See John S. Nelson, “Stands in Politics,” Journal of Politics 46, no. 1 (February 1984): 106–131.
See J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, New York, Ballantine Books, 1965: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.
Also see Roger Sale, “Tolkien and Frodo Baggins,” Modern Heroism, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1973, pp. 193–240.
See Charles D. Elder and Roger W. Cobb, The Political Uses of Symbols, New York, Longman, 1983.
Also see Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Urbana, University of Illinois Press (1964), 2nd ed., 1985;
Murray Edelman, Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail, New York, Academic Press, 1977;
Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle; The Politics of Misinformation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
See John S.Nelson and Barbara J. Hill, “Facing the Holocaust: Robert Arneson’s Ceramic Myth of Postmodern Catastrophe,” in Human Rights/Human Wrongs: Art and Social Change, Robert Hobbs and Fredrick Woodard, eds., Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1986, pp. 189–209.
See David Denby, “Battle Fatigue: Flags of Our Fathers and Babel,” New Yorker 82, no. 35, October 30, 2006, pp. 102–103;
Louis P. Masur, “Suspended in Time,” Chronicle of Higher Education 53, no. 12, November 10, 2006, p. B16.
Thus the philosopher of science Paul K. Feyerabend once urged, “Let’s Make More Movies,” in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell, eds., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1975, pp. 201–210. In a different direction, the scholarly journal of Philosophy and Literature strives to treat literary works as philosophical contributions.
See Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, John Cumming, trans., New York, Herder and Herder, 1944;
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, New York, Seabury Press, 1947.
Also see Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, Thomas McCarthy, trans., Boston, Beacon Press (1973), 1975;
Jürgen Habermas, “The Crisis of Late Capitalism and the Future of Democracy: An Interview by Angelo Bolaffi,” Eleni Mahaira-Odoni, trans., Telos 39 (Spring 1979): 163–172.
And see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950, Boston, Little, Brown, 1973;
Morton Schoolman, Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Aesthetic Individuality, New York, Routledge, 2001.
See Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press (1960), revised version, 2004.
See John G. Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation, Cambridge, MA, Winthrop, 1979;
John G. Gunnell, Between Philosophy and Politics: The Alienation of Political Theory, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1986;
John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993;
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See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press (1962), expanded edition, 1970;
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Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970.
See John S. Nelson, “Once More on Kuhn,” Political Methodology 1, no. 2 (Spring 1974): 73–104.
See Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review 63, no. 4 (December 1969):1062–1082.
See Robert Dahl, “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 55, no. 4 (December 1961): 763–772;
David Easton, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 63, no. 4 (December 1969): 1051–1061;
John A. Wahlke, “Pre-Behavioralism in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 73, no. 1 (March 1979): 9–31.
See Heinz Eulau, The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1963;
George J. Graham Jr. and George W. Carey, eds., The Post-Behavioral Era: Perspectives on Political Science, New York, David McKay, 1972.
Also see John S. Nelson, “Education for Politics: Rethinking Research on Political Socialization,” What Should Political Theory Be Now? Albany, State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 413–478; John S. Nelson, ed., “Political Theory as Political Rhetoric,” What Should Political Theory Be Now? Albany, State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 413–478.
See Sheldon S. Wolin, “Paradigms and Political Theories,” in Politics and Experience, P. King and B. C. Parekh, eds., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 125–152;
Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory: Trends and Goals,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, David L. Sills, ed., New York, Crowell Collier and Macmillan, 1968, vol. 12, pp. 318–330.
By genre, Wolin’s Politics and Vision is intellectual history rather than epic theory, and the same goes for Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2001. Wolin engaged the politics of the day not only in democracy but also in books that defend of his sense of student politics of the sixties in The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics and Education in the Technological Society, New York, Vintage Books, 1970, plus a volume edited with Seymour Martin Lipset on The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1965.
Otherwise Wolin’s articles and books strike me, at least, as works of critical—rather than constructive, let alone epic—theory: Sheldon S. Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989;
Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008.
See Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Boston, Little, Brown (2000), enlarged edition, 2002.
On stands and stances, see John S. Nelson, “Stands in Politics,” Journal of Politics 46, no. 1 (February 1984): 106–131.
On movements, see Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1994;
Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001;
Davis S. Meyer, Nancy Whittier, and Belinda Robnett, eds., Social Movements: Identity, Culture, and the State, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002;
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See Judith N. Shklar, “Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Moral Failures of Asocial Man,” Political Theory 1, no. 3 (August 1973): 259–286;
Judith N. Shklar, “The Phenomenology: Beyond Morality,” Western Political Quarterly 27, no. 4 (December 1974): 597–623.
See Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
See John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972;
John Dunn, Dependence and Opportunity: Political Change in Ahafo, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973;
John Dunn, West African States: Failure and Promise, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978;
John Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy, London, Atlantic, 2005.
Also see John Dryzek, Rational Ecology, Oxford, Blackwell, 1987;
John Dryzek, Discursive Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990;
John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000;
and John Dryzek and Leslie Templeman Holmes, Post-Communist Democratization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002;
and others. John Dryzek and others, Green States and Social Movements, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003;
See Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River, New York, Ballantine Books (1949, 1953), 1966;
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1977;
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, New York, Harper and Row, 1982;
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, San Francisco, North Point Press, 1990;
Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardeners Education, New York, Dell, 1991.
Also see Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination, New York, Oxford University Press, 1993;
Florence R. Krall, Ecotone: Wayfaring on the Margins, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994;
Andrew Szasz, EcoPopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1994;
John M. Meyer, Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2001.
See Anna Lorien Nelson and John S. Nelson, “Institutions in Feminist and Republican Science Fiction,” legal Studies Forum 22, no. 4 (1998): 641–653.
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Nelson, J.S. (2013). An Epic Comeback? Postwestern Politics in Film and Theory. In: Popular Cinema as Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137373861_2
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