SOURCE: Spininger, Dennis J. “The Paradise Setting of Chateaubriand's Atala.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 89, no. 3 (May 1974): 530-6.

In the following essay, Spininger considers the symbolic values of the landscape descriptions in Atala. Spininger claims the tensions in the descriptions not only serve Chateaubriand's aesthetic purposes, but represent the doubleness of the New World as an exotic, Eden-like paradise which also is harsh and savage.

The lush landscape description with which Chateaubriand begins his novel Atala has been approached from curiously myopic critical perspectives. Hostile critics have usually attempted to undermine its authenticity. Favorable critics have too often swooned without performing adequate analysis. The details of the description have been checked and rechecked from the points of view of geography, botany, and zoology. Various discerned errors, departures from the scientifically verified fauna and flora of the region he describes, have been used as the...