Publications

Publication details [#6789]

Kolodny, Annette. 2005. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 200 pp.

Abstract

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 metaphor's implications for the current ecological crisis. (Publisher Book Description)