Artifacts and Illuminations

Loren Eiseley (1907–77) is one of the most important American nature writers of the twentieth century and an admired practitioner of creative nonfiction. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Eiseley was a professor of anthropology and a prolific writer and poet who worked to bring an understanding of science to the general public, incorporating religion, philosophy, and science into his explorations of the human mind and the passage of time.As a writer who bridged the sciences and the humanities, Eiseley is a challenge for scholars locked into rigid disciplinary boundaries. Artifacts and Illuminations, the first full-length collection of critical essays on the writing of Eiseley, situates his work in the genres of creative nonfiction and nature writing. The contributing scholars apply a variety of critical approaches, including ecocriticism and place-oriented studies ranging across prairie, urban, and international contexts. Contributors explore such diverse topics as Eiseley’s use of anthropomorphism and Jungian concepts and examine how his work was informed by synecdoche. Long overdue, this collection demonstrates Eiseley’s continuing relevance as both a skilled literary craftsman and a profound thinker about the human place in the natural world.

"Past and future readings of Eiseley have been illuminated by this profound and expansive collection of essays. Anyone with a fondness for Eiseley or the journey of the American nature writing tradition will find Artifacts and Illuminations of immense interest."—Frank Izaguirre, Ecozon@

Tom Lynch is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of Xerophilia: Ecocritical Explorations in Southwestern Literature. Susan N. Maher is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She is coeditor of John McPhee and the Art of Literary Nonfiction.