{"product_id":"degraded-heartland-antipastoral-agriculture-and-the-rural-modern-in-us-literature-9781421452425","title":"Degraded Heartland: Antipastoral, Agriculture, and the Rural Modern in Us Literature","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHow did rural America come to be viewed as backward and inferior, and how did literary modernism respond to and critique this perception?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat happens when rural America--long romanticized in pastoral literature--becomes associated with deficiency, degradation, and decline? Maria Farland's \u003ci\u003eDegraded Heartland\u003c\/i\u003e is the first critical study of US literary antipastoral, a mode that exposes the stark realities of rural poverty and ecological devastation while highlighting the jagged process of modernization in the countryside. It provides a historical account of how ideas of rural backwardness developed in US literary culture. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePositioned against idealized visions of rural life, the antipastoral interrogates ideas of rural backwardness and deficiency, emphasizing the perceived need for reform through capital investment, mechanization, and education. Antipastoral literature reflects the modernizing impulse--embodied in machinery, scientific agriculture, and incipient agribusiness--while exposing the disruptions these changes provoked. It responds to the nineteenth-century panic around \"wastelands\" and disturbing episodes like the Eugenics Survey of Vermont and its fascination with rural \"degeneracy.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eDegraded Heartland \u003c\/i\u003ereveals how writers like Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and W. E. B. Du Bois grappled with the uneven transformation of the American countryside. In dialogue with agricultural and rural reform discourse, their works underscore the tension between persistent stereotypes of rural stagnation and the realities of a rapidly evolving heartland. This book challenges the dominance of metropolitan modernism and enriches our understanding of the rural modern as a vital and contested space in American culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Maria Farland\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/18\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSeries:\u003c\/b\u003e Hopkins Studies in Modernism\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 408\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.19lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781421452425","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45109254160521,"sku":"9781421452425","price":114.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_26f9fccc-7466-4a19-93e7-7991f09d13cd.jpg?v=1767073516","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/degraded-heartland-antipastoral-agriculture-and-the-rural-modern-in-us-literature-9781421452425","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}