1. Jan van der Straet America (1759) The Nature as Feminine ”Virgin Land” Literature and Nature University of Helsinki / Comparative Literature Pekka Raittinen M.A.

2. Henry Nash Smith’s ”Virgin Land” The central trope and metaphor of the conquest of the West From ”virgin” unsettled land to agricultural land => ”The Garden of the World” North American continent seen as female

3. Earth Goddess or ”The White Goddess” Sir James Frazer: The Golden Bough (1890 – 1915) => Dying and revived god married to earth goddess Robert Graves The White Goddess (1948) Both books critisized But, especially Frazer’s work incredibly influential, used and refered to in Joyce, Faulkner, Freud etc.

4. Carolyn Merchant (s.1936) The Death of Nature (1980) => From Renaissance ”female earth” and holistic cosmology to Scientific Revolution Reinventing Eden (2003) => Judeo- Christian has seen nature as female=> Narratives structure our view of nature