The Spiritual Journal of Henry David ThoreauMost people who care about nature cannot help but use religious language to describe their experience of it. We can trace many of these conceptions of nature and holiness directly to influential nineteenth-century writers, especially Henry David Thoreau (18171862). As the most comprehensive study of Thoreau's spirituality from a Christian perspective, The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau is the first to seriously examine connections between Thoreau's religious practices and those of his Protestant forebears. While a few writers have considered the relation between Thoreau's thought and Christian doctrine, this book instead outlines the links between Thoreau's religious practices (such as keeping a spiritual journal, studying nature, and walking) and those of earlier New England Protestants. It is also one of the first books to treat spiritual journals as a distinct literary genre. |
Contents
Chapter 1Religious Practices7 | 37 |
Chapter 4Thoreaus Vision | 121 |
Chapter 5Seeing as Communion | 155 |
Chapter 6Walking Without Traveling | 189 |
Chapter 7The Wild | 219 |
Conclusion | 250 |
Bibliography | 257 |
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Common terms and phrases
autobiography beauty bird blue heron Bronson Alcott calls Cambridge century Christian church common communion Concord and Merrimack conscious critics David Brainerd diarists discipline divine Edited Edwards's entries Essays experience of nature expression faith feel forebears God's Harvard University Press Haven CT Henry David Thoreau Henry Thoreau human Ibid idea important individual influenced interest intimacy John John Woolman Jonathan Edwards kind landscape language Lawrence Buell live means Merrimack Rivers mind miracles Miscellaneous Notebooks natural history natural theology observations ordinary particular perceive perception person philosophical piety pilgrimage practice Princeton University Press Puritan Quaker radical Ralph Waldo Emerson recognize record regard relation religion religious reveals Romantic thinkers Samuel Taylor Coleridge scientific sense spiritual diary spiritual journal theological things Thoreau believes Thoreau writes Thoreau's Journal thought tradition transcendentalism transcendentalists truth understanding Unitarian vision Walden Walden Pond walking Wesley Whitefield wild Woolman Yale University Press York