The Midwestern Pastoral — 2006 ·

Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland

By William Barillas

“This study establishes a distinct genre, the Midwestern pastoral—novels, poems, autobiographies, even nonfiction essays on ecology—that looks deeply into the landscape of the American Midwest, recognizing its underappreciated beauty, mourning its defilement by utilitarian farming practices and urban sprawl, and honoring what is best in its inhabitants, whether indigenous or immigrant.”

Stephen Trout — author of Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First World War

“(The Midwestern Pastoral) makes a significant contribution to cultural studies of American and midwestern literature, encouraging awareness of holistic ethical systems and recognition of the claims of ecological science and history. . . The volume is particularly strong in its balanced interdisciplinary approach.”

American Studies

“The Midwestern Pastoral adds a valuable voice to environmental and literary (and even ‘eco-literary’) dialogue. Scholars will be informed by (Barillas’s) comments on the environment and the five writers he treats. And his five compelling and well-written chapters on Cather, Leopold, Roethke, Wright, and Harrison will send many occasional readers to revisit their works.”

North Dakota Quarterly

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The midwestern pastoral is a literary tradition of place and rural experience that celebrates an attachment to land that is mystical as well as practical, based on historical and scientific knowledge as well as personal experience. It is exemplified in the poetry, fiction, and essays of writers who express an informed love of the nature and regional landscapes of the Midwest.

Drawing on recent studies in cultural geography, environmental history, and mythology, as well as literary criticism, The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland relates Midwestern pastoral writers to their local geographies and explains their approaches. William Barillas treats five important Midwestern pastoralists—Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and Jim Harrison—in separate chapters. He also discusses Jane Smiley, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Paul Gruchow, and others.

For these writers, the aim of writing is not merely intellectual and aesthetic, but democratic and ecological. In depicting and promoting commitment to local communities, human and natural, they express their love for, their understanding of, and their sense of place in the American Midwest. Students and serious readers, as well as scholars in the growing field of literature and the environment, will appreciate this study of writers who counter alienation and materialism in modern society.

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William Barillas is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He is the author of many essays on American literature and the editor of the forthcoming Interior Borderlands: Writings on Latino/a Literature of Chicago and the Midwest.