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"Blessed home": Nature, religion, sc...

Holmes, Steven Jon.

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"Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	"Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir./
Author:	Holmes, Steven Jon.
Description:	287 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-05, Section: A, page: 2104.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International57-05A.
Subject:	American Studies. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9631507

"Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir.
Holmes, Steven Jon.

"Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir. - 287 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-05, Section: A, page: 2104.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 1996.

In this dissertation, I develop a new approach to environmental biography and use it to give a major reinterpretation of the early life of the American environmentalist and nature writer John Muir (1838-1914). Expanding traditional psychological and religious studies concepts to include human relationships with the natural world, I reconstruct Muir's early inner life through consideration of his letters, journals, published writings, and historical and cultural context. My detailed investigation of Muir's childhood in Scotland and youth in Wisconsin suggests that his most powerful experiences of his natural surroundings involved a perception of them as a religiously-charged "home," continuous with the emotional and cultural meanings of his actual home, family, friendships, and ethnic identity. Integrated with the scientific understandings gleaned from his university years, this symbolic sense of the natural world as home increased in importance as he left--and on occasion returned to--his actual home, during the period of his young adulthood. These early modes of experiencing his natural surroundings shaped his inner life more profoundly than the two events that most scholars have regarded as crucial in his early development--his solo walk through the South in 1867 and his famous entry into Yosemite Valley two years later. While previous scholarly and popular interpretations have centered on a dramatic "conversion experience" in Yosemite, I argue that the source of the conversion imagery, Muir's 1911 book My First Summer in the Sierra, represents not an original journal--as has usually been thought--but a much revised version of the story. Delving beneath this later imagery by examining Muir's experiences of specific landscapes, human relationships, symbolic meanings, and cultural influences, my study reveals strong patterns of continuity with his past patterns of experiencing nature, thus constituting a new interpretation of his life and cultural legacy. My work will be of interest not only to students of Muir and of American environmental and literary history but to anyone interested in the process by which an individual comes to inhabit a particular natural place in a deeply powerful way.Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017604
American Studies.

"Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir.
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245 1 0 $a "Blessed home": Nature, religion, science, and human relationship in the early life of John Muir.
300 $a 287 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-05, Section: A, page: 2104.
500 $a Adviser: Lawrence Buell.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 1996.
520 $a In this dissertation, I develop a new approach to environmental biography and use it to give a major reinterpretation of the early life of the American environmentalist and nature writer John Muir (1838-1914). Expanding traditional psychological and religious studies concepts to include human relationships with the natural world, I reconstruct Muir's early inner life through consideration of his letters, journals, published writings, and historical and cultural context. My detailed investigation of Muir's childhood in Scotland and youth in Wisconsin suggests that his most powerful experiences of his natural surroundings involved a perception of them as a religiously-charged "home," continuous with the emotional and cultural meanings of his actual home, family, friendships, and ethnic identity. Integrated with the scientific understandings gleaned from his university years, this symbolic sense of the natural world as home increased in importance as he left--and on occasion returned to--his actual home, during the period of his young adulthood. These early modes of experiencing his natural surroundings shaped his inner life more profoundly than the two events that most scholars have regarded as crucial in his early development--his solo walk through the South in 1867 and his famous entry into Yosemite Valley two years later. While previous scholarly and popular interpretations have centered on a dramatic "conversion experience" in Yosemite, I argue that the source of the conversion imagery, Muir's 1911 book My First Summer in the Sierra, represents not an original journal--as has usually been thought--but a much revised version of the story. Delving beneath this later imagery by examining Muir's experiences of specific landscapes, human relationships, symbolic meanings, and cultural influences, my study reveals strong patterns of continuity with his past patterns of experiencing nature, thus constituting a new interpretation of his life and cultural legacy. My work will be of interest not only to students of Muir and of American environmental and literary history but to anyone interested in the process by which an individual comes to inhabit a particular natural place in a deeply powerful way.
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856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=9631507