Description
In A Language of Things, Devin Zuber offers a critical attempt to restore the fundamental role that religious experience could play in shaping nineteenth-century American approaches to natural space. By tracing the ways that Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Vachel Lindsay all variously responded to Swedenborgian thought, Zuber illuminates the complex dynamic that came to unfold between the religious, the literary, and the ecological.
About the Author
Devin P. Zuber is Associate Professor of American Studies, Religion, and Literature at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.
Reviews
A Language of Things represents an important contribution to our understanding of American culture, religious history, and environmental history. It offers a searching, thoroughly researched explanation of how and why Emanuel Swedenborg and his followers helped to spark that Romantic re-enchantment of the natural world championed by nineteenth-century figures such as John Chapman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, sustained as well by later figures such as John Muir and Sarah Orne Jewett.
An engaging, enlightening, and much needed examination of the influence of Swedenborg's ideas on prominent environmental thinkers and writers.
Book Information
ISBN 9780813943510
Author Devin P. Zuber
Format Paperback
Page Count 266
Imprint University of Virginia Press
Publisher University of Virginia Press
Weight(grams) 384g