The Temporal Perspective of Landscape in Louis Bromfield’s Writing

Throughout Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield’s long career in the first half of the twentieth century, he produced both fiction and non-fiction writings on a wide variety of subjects, but there was one topic that consistently reappeared in novels, short stories, essays, and non-fiction works: the blending of people and nature in the farm landscape. This paper will examine the landscape concept and its relationship to ideas of both nature and time, as illustrated by examples from Louis Bromfield’s writing. It will first review traditional understandings of landscape and time, particularly discussions of landscape memory or vision, and explain the significance of a more complete temporal perspective. This will be followed by examples gleaned from four of Bromfield’s works: a novel, a novella, a short story, and a personal narrative. Finally, the paper will conclude with a discussion of implications of the temporal perspective on landscape as it applies to people and nature.