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In 1847, Senator Daniel Webster welcomed the railway to his home state of New Hampshire in a speech celebrating American skill and industry. He praises the natural abundance of the landscape -the rich beauty of the Connecticut River valley, the water-power of the Merrimack, and the gorgeous fields and forests of his own farm -but refutes any connection between the local environment and the classical ideal: 'New Hampshire', he says, '... has no Virgil and no Eclogues.' 1 Invoking Virgil as a foil, Webster dismisses objections to the destruction of farmland and rural peace as mere nostalgia for an outmoded literary tradition, and exaggerates the contrast between Old World and New, 'otium' and 'negotium', fanciful poetry and real-world profits. Webster aligns rural appreciation and conservation with antiquated conventions, as out of place in the rapidly industrializing nation as the simple herdsmen and idyllic landscapes of Virgil's Eclogues.In his foundational study of American pastoral, Leo Marx analyses Webster's contrast between the railroad and the rural idyll it threatens to disrupt as a touchstone of nineteenth-century US cultural history. Webster's enthusiasm for industrial pr

Author

Wagner-McCoy, Sarah (author)

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)

Published

2022

Language

EN

ISBN

9781316519875