Wilderness Lost: The Religious Origins of the American MindThis book establishes that there is a consistent tradition of wilderness imagery in American literature, A psychological reading of theology is applied to the writings of such authors as Thomas Hooker, Jonathan Edwards, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson. |
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Page 11
... salvation , and the means of freedom was an experi- ence of terror called the Fear of God . To pass from the tyranny of structure to the liberation of spirit required a purifying journey through the terrifying , chaotic wilderness of ...
... salvation , and the means of freedom was an experi- ence of terror called the Fear of God . To pass from the tyranny of structure to the liberation of spirit required a purifying journey through the terrifying , chaotic wilderness of ...
Page 12
... salvation . Only out of this destruc- tion of the old dependencies , so the Puritans believed , could there arise the possibility of a better way of being . Another world could be revealed only after the old one had crumbled . The ...
... salvation . Only out of this destruc- tion of the old dependencies , so the Puritans believed , could there arise the possibility of a better way of being . Another world could be revealed only after the old one had crumbled . The ...
Page 15
... salvation . How- ever , his efforts were only immediately effective . In a short time , his followers repeated the mistake of their ancestors and mistook literal signs for evidence of true conversion . They came to believe , once again ...
... salvation . How- ever , his efforts were only immediately effective . In a short time , his followers repeated the mistake of their ancestors and mistook literal signs for evidence of true conversion . They came to believe , once again ...
Page 23
... salvation . It would be misleading to suggest that every Puritan in seventeenth- century New England when thinking about the wilderness always kept all four of these versions in mind . The many overlapping meanings of cultural symbols ...
... salvation . It would be misleading to suggest that every Puritan in seventeenth- century New England when thinking about the wilderness always kept all four of these versions in mind . The many overlapping meanings of cultural symbols ...
Page 25
... salvation , in the experience of conversion , that the symbols burned in their souls and minds . These first settlers believed that it was only by losing themselves in the wilderness of self that they might ever achieve salvation . But ...
... salvation , in the experience of conversion , that the symbols burned in their souls and minds . These first settlers believed that it was only by losing themselves in the wilderness of self that they might ever achieve salvation . But ...
Contents
9 | |
11 | |
23 | |
New England Canaan and the Wilderness | 46 |
The Great Awakening of Fear | 83 |
Revival and Revolution | 111 |
The Transcendental Growth | 149 |
Hawthorne Very and Dickinson The Wilderness of the Mind | 180 |
Herman Melville The Watery Wilderness | 213 |
Wilderness Lost Oliver Wendell Holmes and the OneHoss Shay | 235 |
9 Conclusion | 249 |
Notes | 254 |
Bibliography | 274 |
Index | 287 |
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Common terms and phrases
American Antinomian antitype Arminian Awakening behavior believed Boston called Calvinism Calvinist Cambridge Canaan century children of Israel Christ Christian church consciousness conversion Cotton Cotton Mather covenant culture darkness depravity desert divine doctrine doubt Egypt Emily Dickinson England eternal evangelical experience faith fear God's grace Hawthorne heart heaven hell Herman Melville Holmes's holy Hooker human Ibid identity imagined John Jonathan Edwards letters liberty literal wilderness Lord madness Mary Moody Emerson Mather Melville Melville's mind MME-RWE Moby-Dick mystic Nathaniel Hawthorne nature ness never Oliver Wendell Holmes perception Perry Miller poem preached promised land Puritan Ralph Waldo Emerson rational regeneration religion religious Revolution saints salvation scripture self-love sense sermon shay Shepard sinners sojourn soul spiritual Stoddard subconscious symbol terror Testament theology Thomas Thomas Hooker Thoreau thought tion Transcendental trials true truth Typology University Press vision wilderness imagery wilderness tradition Williams worldly wrath wrote York Zion
Popular passages
Page 111 - And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face, of the serpent.
Page 46 - He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
Page 216 - And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Page 36 - For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Page 18 - To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.
Page 235 - HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it— ah, but stay...
Page 33 - And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
Page 28 - Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope : and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
Page 227 - He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.