The inspirational wilderness: The role of the forest in the literature of the American Renaissance

Despite a wealth of environmentally oriented scholarship, the salvational role of the wilderness in American Renaissance literature remains unexplored. The present study examines this role in the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, as these authors independently and innovatively subverted the negative Puritan paradigm of the "howling wilderness." Whereas the Puritans' theographic ethos mandated the destruction of the "Satanic" and chaotic forest and the creation of a "Citty upon a Hill" distinctively imaged as a garden or "hedge of grace," the American Renaissance writers insisted upon forest preservation, for the mental and spiritual benefits to be found in the naturally ordered sylvan "Citty." As such, Cooper, Emerson, and Thoreau presented participation in the "wilderness-condition" as a sort of salubrious spiritual metrics, in which proximity signified closeness to Deity and Self, while distance from the forest meant psycho-spiritual disease and disintegration.;After an initial examination of promotional literature and of the economic, cultural, and religious significance of the wilderness to the Puritans, the study focuses upon Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Emerson's poems and prose, and Thoreau's Walden, as they promote the spiritual architectonics for a sane and sanctified life. The final chapter examines the alternative views of Hawthorne and Whitman, and discusses recent recognition of the forest's importance as cultural metaphor and ecological reality. The benefits of such a study include the following concerns: literary-historical, psycho-spiritual, cultural, and critical. Not only does the scholar gain a better comprehension of nineteenth-century issues, such as the quest for the perfect community, he further understands the present interest in the wilderness and its role in man's health. Furthermore, a study of the inspirational wilderness paradigm offers a corrective to the voluminous but often misdirected scholarship on these three major authors. The "promotional" literature of Cooper, Emerson, and Thoreau stands as a lasting testimony to the mysterious pull of the forest upon man's soul.