The Lay of the Land: Metaphor As Experience and History in American Life and Letters

About this book

An original and highly unusual psycholinguistic study of American literature and culture from 1584 to 1860 this volume focuses on the metaphor of land-as-woman. It is the first systematic documentation of the recurrent responses to the American continent as a feminine entity (as Mother as Virgin as Temptress as the Ravished) and it is also the first systematic inquiry into the metaphors implications for the current ecological crisis.