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John Smith And Walt Whitman Essay

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Nature writing is a genre that encompasses a range of works and writers throughout many time periods. This genre is based on the study of nature and frequently discusses the interrelationships between humans, nature, and god. In the nearly 300 year span between the writings of John Smith and Walt Whitman, nature writing had evolved. During the colonialist era, as evidenced by John Smith, nature was seen as given to us by god to be utilized in its full capacity, for resources to survive and profit. By the time of Walt Whitman, nature writing was transitioning from the transcendentalist into the realist movement and nature was viewed not as an extension of god, but as a way to learn about ourselves and the world. opposition to romanticism. Three writers between these two time periods, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin and William Cullen Bryant each have a different worldview based on their background and provide a transition between the Puritan and Realism movements. John Smith came to the new world with the Virginia Company in order to colonize the land and to start a new, economically successful life. Although he didn’t find an abundance of gold or silver, he did discover the seemingly endless supply of natural resources that the new world had to offer. Smith viewed these resources as a source of income. Smith wrote “A Description of New-England” as propaganda to persuade others to colonize the new world with the promise of an abundance of resources, which had been

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