Enchanted Forests: The Poetic Construction of a World Before Time - Hardcover

by Boria Sax (Author)

Linking literature, philosophy, art, and personal experience, a moving exploration of the wooded landscape's power.

In 1985 Boria Sax inherited an area of forest in New York State, which had been purchased by his Russian, Jewish, and Communist grandparents as a buffer against what they felt was a hostile world. For Sax, in the years following, the woodland came to represent a link with those who currently live and had lived there, including Native Americans, settlers, bears, deer, turtles, and migrating birds. In this personal and eloquent account, Sax explores the meanings and cultural history of forests from prehistory to the present, taking in Gilgamesh, Virgil, Dante, the Gawain poet, medieval alchemists, the Brothers Grimm, Hudson River painters, Latin American folklore, contemporary African novelists, and much more. Combining lyricism with contemporary scholarship, Sax opens new emotional, intellectual, and environmental perspectives on the storied history of the forest.

Author Biography

Boria Sax teaches at Sing Sing Prison and online in the Graduate Literature Program at Mercy College. He has published many books, which have won awards and been translated into numerous languages. Most recently, he is the author of Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds, also published by Reaktion Books.