Since the discovery of the American continent, Europeans saw the land I call home as the objectification of Nature, good and bad. Coming to a relatively unpopulated region, the European explorers, settlers, and thinkers were faced with a lot empty land-space upon which their imaginations and philosophical principles were able to impose a number of interpretations. Interestingly, a lot of those interpretations were positive, even glowing, as in Michael Drayton’s 1615 ode “To the Virginian Voyage.” He interprets the unknown continent as “Earth’s only paradise” where a “golden age” reigns and “nature hath in store/Fowl, venison, and fish,/And the fruitful’st soil/Without your toil/Three harvests more,/All greater than your wish.”
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