Nature, God, or Spirit?

One of the topics that I found to be most intriguing from our class discussions were our talks about Emerson’s, Nature, piece.  However, I found his spiritual associations with nature a bit confusing.  The “transparent eyeball” piece we analyzed in class addresses this aspect of his perceptions, as do some other areas of the text.

We learned that Nature has come to be thought of as the “manifesto” of transcendentalism.  We also learned that reason versus understanding and finding divinity in nature are interests of transcendentalists too.  To myself, these ideas seem conflicting. Emerson writes, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith.” (29). This seems very foreign.  Reason and faith are very different ways of thinking.  I have always viewed faith as believing in something without needing reasoning, while reason seems like something involving little faith and mostly facts.  So the juxtaposition of the two feels shocking and contradictory. Emerson abandoned his life of organized religion, so I wonder to what kind of faith is he referring?  Especially, since later in the essay he writes that “religion and ethics” have an, “analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature…” (48).  Although Emerson references and makes many comparisons of nature with religious topics, I am led to believe that perhaps he is not directly referencing a religious faith, but rather faith in oneself, or perhaps something else?

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Two Defintions of Nature found In Rowlandson

For this week’s blog I thought it would be a good idea to examine the text “A Narrative of Captivity” by Mary Rowlandson  from two weeks prior because of personal favor for the text and answer one of  the courses  “central questions” in order to get a better grasp on how this text can be viewed as “environmental literature” .  The text will be examined with the focal point of answering the central question- “What kinds of environmental and nature are of interest in the text?  How does the author define these terms (explicitly or implicitly), and how useful are these definitions?” I will focus heavily on the “useful” aspect of the definitions of natures, as I feel it has been covered in class thoroughly how the these texts are anthropocentric or ecocentric and how they align with another important questions such as Buell’s checklist.

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