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Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
BOOKArcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23867
Perhaps America's best environmental idea was not the national park but the garden cemetery, a use of space that quickly gained popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. Such spaces of repose brought key elements of the countryside into rapidly expanding cities, making nature accessible to all and serving to remind visitors of the natural cycles of life. In this unique interdisciplinary blend of historical narrative, cultural criticism, and poignant memoir, Aaron Sachs argues that American cemeteries embody a forgotten landscape tradition that has much to teach us in our current moment of environmental crisis.

Until the trauma of the Civil War, many Americans sought to shape society into what they thought of as an Arcadia—not an Eden where fruit simply fell off the tree, but a public garden that depended on an ethic of communal care, and whose sense of beauty and repose related directly to an acknowledgement of mortality and limitation. Sachs explores the notion of Arcadia in the works of nineteenth-century nature writers, novelists, painters, horticulturists, landscape architects, and city planners, and holds up for comparison the twenty-first century's—and his own—tendency toward denial of both death and environmental limits. His far-reaching insights suggest new possibilities for the environmental movement today and new ways of understanding American history.
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Print publication date January 2013 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300176407
EISBN 9780300276640
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Illustrations 54
Print Status in print
Publisher (in print)
WorldCat
Google Books

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List of illustrations

  • Cemetery of Mount Auburn
  • Et in Arcadia Ego
  • Map of the City of Ithaca, N.Y., Engraved Expressly for Norton and Hanford’s Ithaca City Directory
  • Plan of Mount Auburn
  • Yellow Belle-Fleur
  • The Kanadesaga monument
  • Great Mound at Marietta, Ohio
  • The Course of Empire: Desolation
  • Bird’s Eye View of Greenwood Cemetery, near New York
  • Mount Repose Cemetery
  • View of Samsonville Tannery, Olive Township, Ulster County, New York
  • Prattsville, Greene Co., N.Y, 1850
  • North Western Part of Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey
  • View of Hudson City and the Catskill Mountains
  • Dearborn's Seedling Pear
  • Washington, D.C., with projected improvements
  • The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State
  • Dream of Arcadia
  • An Evening in Arcadia
  • A View from the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains
  • Daniel Boone and His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake
  • Voyage of Life: Manhood
  • The Cross in the Wilderness
  • Thomas Cole’s grave
  • Kindred Spirits
  • To the Memory of Cole
  • The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane
  • Civil War amputee Lieutenant Burritt Stiles, Co. A, 14th Connecticut Volunteers
  • Ft. Sanders, Knoxville, Tenn., showing saliant assaulted by Longstreets forces, Novr. 29th 1863
  • The Lackawanna Valley
  • Hunter Mountain, Twilight
  • A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
  • Wounded Escaping from the Burning Woods of the Wilderness
  • Skirmish in the Wilderness
  • The Initials
  • Interior of Fort Sedgwick
  • Trooper Meditating beside a Grave
  • The Veteran in a New Field
  • Pileated woodpecker, near Finland, Minnesota
  • The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
  • Valley of the Yosemite
  • Dayton National Cemetery
  • Civil War amputee Lieutenant Burritt Stiles, Co. A, 14th Connecticut Volunteers (with prosthetic)
  • National Soldiers’ Home near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, North-Western Branch
  • Grave of Benjamin Tevya Sachs
  • Farview Park
  • Indian Mounds Park
  • Gold Medal Park
  • Grave of H. W. S. Cleveland, Lakewood Cemetery
  • The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge
  • View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow
  • American Gothic
  • Playground in a cemetery
  • Bartlett
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Contents
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Contents
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23868
Read
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Illustrations
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Illustrations
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23869
Read
Prologue: Waterfalls and Cemeteries
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
I’ve come to believe that we Americans have a long tradition of creating and celebrating such landscapes.See Aaron Sachs, “American Arcadia: Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nineteenth-Century Landscape Tradition,” Environmental History 15 (April 2010), 206–35. It is not nearly so well known as the one that venerates the majestic waterfalls at Niagara and Yosemite, but it deserves to be, for at times it was even more central in American culture than the wilderness mythos—and it may well be more relevant today. The nature lovers of the nineteenth century, in particular, embroiled in their society’s desperate struggles over the transition from agrarianism to urban-industrial capitalism, bequeathed to us a cornucopia of productive environmental ideas, as well as actual...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.1-17
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23870
Chapter subject tags:Cemeteries--United States--History--19th centuryLandscape architecture--HistoryArcadia in artEnvironmentalism--United States--History--19th centuryArcadianism

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1. Common Shade: Cultivating a Place for Death
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
The neighborhood was well calculated to foster the reveries of a mind like mine. . . . I would throw myself, during the panting heats of a summer noon, under the shade of some wide-spreading tree, and muse and dream away the hours, in a state of mental intoxication. . . . There is a repose in our mighty forests, that gives full scope to the...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.19-61
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23871
Chapter subject tags:Mount Auburn Cemetery (Cambridge, Mass.)Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878Landscape designHorticulture--United States--History--19th centuryIndians of North America--Funeral customs and ritesCemeteries--United States--History--19th century

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2. The Middle Landscapes of New England Culture
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
“Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it, to fix upon a spot for a cemetery? Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death’s garden-ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape our funeral rites, and the...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.62-95
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23872
Chapter subject tags:ArcadianismHawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864Fuller, Margaret, 1810-1850Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862Environmentalism--United States--History--19th centuryAmerican literature--19th century

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3. Sleepy Hollow: A Young Nation in Repose
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
There is no such “right of property” possible in a republic. . . . To fence out a genial eye from any corner of the earth which Nature has lovingly touched with that pencil which never repeats itself—to shut up a glen or a waterfall for one man’s exclusive knowing and enjoying—to lock up trees and glades, shady paths and haunts...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.96-136
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23873
Chapter subject tags:Cemeteries--United States--History--19th centuryIndustrialization in artHorticulture--HistoryDowning, A. J. (Andrew Jackson), 1815-1852Landscape designCole, Thomas, 1801-1848

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4. Stumps
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Often, of course, American fields were so cluttered with stumps that there was no question of forgetting about them for any length of time. (Figures 30 and 31.)
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.137-209
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23874
Chapter subject tags:United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865Landscape painting, American--19th centuryDeforestationHomer, Winslow, 1836-1910

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5. Three Men of the Middle Border (Part One): Twilight
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
All coming generations are to inhabit the cities and towns, and go to their daily labors in the streets, and seek recreation in the parks and pleasure grounds, and be laid to rest in the cemeteries, the foundations of which we are laying or preparing to lay, and whose essential features of arrangement are immutable from the time they are first...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.210-251
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23875
Chapter subject tags:Garland, Hamlin, 1860-1940George, Henry, 1839-1897Environmentalism--United States--History--19th centuryCleveland, H. W. S. (Horace William Shaler), 1814-1900

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6. Three Men of the Middle Border (Part Two): American Homelessness
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
They cut us off from our game. They ordered us to farm, and this without knowing the character of our reservation. The soil of this country is very hard and dry and the climate severe. . . . For the most part the crops burn up under the fierce sun and the still more savage wind. In winter it is a terrible place to live unless one is sheltered by the cottonwood and...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.252-299
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23876
Chapter subject tags:Cemeteries--United States--History--19th centuryCleveland, H. W. S. (Horace William Shaler), 1814-1900Indians of North America--Funeral customs and ritesUrban landscape architectureGeorge, Henry, 1839-1897Garland, Hamlin, 1860-1940Landscape design

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7. Atlantis: Arcadia and Armageddon
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
The island lay, as through the ages past, fair and imperial in the Atlantic. Though now was it becoming wanton, even to its undoing. Else would not this be written.
—Elizabeth G. Birkmaier, Poseidon’s Paradise: The Romance of Atlantis (1892)
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.300-346
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23877
Chapter subject tags:Donnelly, Ignatius, 1831-1901Cemeteries--United States--History--19th centuryIndians of North America--Funeral customs and ritesAmerican literature--19th centuryEnvironmentalism--United States--History--19th centuryArcadianismCole, Thomas, 1801-1848

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Epilogue: American Gothic; Or, Death by Landscape
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
In the course of the nineteenth century bourgeois society has, by means of hygienic and social, private and public institutions, realized a secondary effect which may have been its subconscious main purpose: to make it possible for people to avoid the sight of the dying. Dying was once a public process in the life of the individual, and a most exemplary one; think...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Related print edition pages: pp.347-368
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23878
Chapter subject tags:Cemeteries--United States--History--20th centuryEnvironmentalism--United States--History--20th centuryHorticulture--HistoryMumford, Lewis, 1895-1990Wood, Grant, 1891-1942. American Gothic

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Acknowledgments
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
From the start, I have thought of this book project as being dedicated to Christine Evans, who graciously enfolded it into the life we have been building together, even when that entailed significant sacrifices on her part. She is more skilled than I at the art of acknowledgment, in all senses. But I at least want to try to express my daily sense of gratitude for...
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23879
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Illustration Credits
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Illustration Credits
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23880
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Index
Aaron Sachs
Description: Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
Index
Author
Aaron Sachs
PublisherYale University Press
Copyright© 2013 by Aaron Sachs
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23881
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Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition
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