Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Blake’S Green Symbols Of Humanity, Society, And Spirituality, Angela J. Heagy

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

William Blake is an exemplar of Romantic poetry characterized by depictions of the occult, the divine, and human nature. Despite Blake’s reputation as a Romantic poet, many critics claim that there is not sufficient evidence to consider him a nature writer. As a result, Blake’s name is frequently omitted from ecological discussions; some scholars go so far as to claim that Blake’s poetry demonstrates a disregard for nature altogether. This article argues that an eco-critical analysis of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience reveals nature to be Blake’s continual source of inspiration. Within this collection, nature represents the struggles …

Always Running At Sunset, Amelia O'Neill

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis show includes paintings that depict scenes of the trails that my dog and I frequent in Utah. These paintings are a response to experiences I have in nature and explore my relationship with my dog and the surrounding flora and fauna along the local trails. The paintings include images of rocks, sticks, dirt, trails, dogs, clouds, and dried sunflowers in the wind. In addition to realistic depictions of nature, my paintings reflect on the psychological and emotional state of being in nature. The title of the show is Always Running at Sunset, which is meant to be taken …

From Cotton Mcgintey's Rain Sermon To Boy Scout Troop 167 At Agassiz Meadows, Hugh Uintas, Warren Hatch

BYU Studies Quarterly

Remember how rain drummed your tent last night? And when you were outdoors, how it wrapped you up? Brightened every sniff of spruce and lightning-sparked ozone.

More Than Stories: Indigenous Environmental Reciprocity In The Poetry Of Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Rebecca Purse

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis brings to the forefront the traditional stories Marshallese poet, performer, and climate change activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner shares in her published poetry. Indigenous studies scholars agree that Indigenous stories have power--power to change, power to inform, and power to heal. The traditional stories in Jetñil-Kijiner's poetry reveal the power of the environment and the potential relationships that can exist between humans and natural beings. While these traditional stories work to disrupt the narrative that Indigenous perspectives, knowledges, and cultures are somehow inferior to their colonial neighbors', they also assert the need for a return to environmental reciprocit--or the establishment …

All That Anyone Could Be, Olivia Moskot

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Humans And The Red-Hot Stove: Hurston's Nature-Caution Theorizing In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Heather Sharlene Higgs Randall

Theses and Dissertations

This paper gives critical attention to the nature versus caution porch conversation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, arguing that this is a legitimate addition to the anthropological discussion of nature versus culture. Addressing literary critics as well as scholars of the environmental humanities and of multispecies studies, I argue that Hurston's nature-caution discussion is a helpful epistemology which Hurston employs throughout her novel to suggest a single, unified way of understanding the human and nonhuman.

Nature And The Poet: A Comparision Of The Poetry Of Joseph Freiherr Von Eichendorff And Kobayashi Issa, Jane Cox

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the bearing that metaphysical philosophy about nature has on two late 18^th century and early 19^th century poets. Although living in different hemispheres and cultures, the works of Romantic poet Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff and haikai Kobayashi Issa both used interactions with nature to illustrate their own personal experiences. However, their differing metaphysical beliefs concerning nature impacted their presentation of their experiences as well as their experiences themselves. Eichendorff viewed nature as a medium through which the divine can choose to communicate. Nature’s purpose is to act as a vehicle for the divine. His descriptions …

So . . . We're Going For A Walk: A Placed-Based Outdoor Art Experiential Learning Experience, Priscilla Anne Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Schools in the United States often emphasize making children competitive in a global economy while neglecting the importance of developing citizens who are ecologically responsible. Problems of climate change, loss of biodiversity, mass extinctions and degradation of the natural environment, are often ignored. Some researchers have suggested that children lack unstructured play time in nature, have an increased amount of screen time, lack mindfulness, and are insulated from the natural world. Many children rarely have significant experience with nature's wildness. It is common for people to experience a sense of placelessness in the hyper-mobility of present times where "globalizing" agendas …

English Prisoners In Their Unnatural Habitat: Conquering Nature In The Perils Of Certain English Prisoners By Wilkie Collins And Charles Dickens, Madeline Christensen

Student Works

Charles Dickens is most famous for writing about urban spaces and environments such as the city of London. However, as Joseph Carroll points out, there are numerous "prominent British depictions of wild nature" and these depictions of nature find their way into the "cultivated tracts of British domestic fiction" (305). It is this relationship, between the cultivated and uncultivated wilderness that Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins touch upon in their collaborative 1857 Christmas novella, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, and Their Treasure in Women, Children, Silver, and Jewels. Collins and Dickens explore the relationship between humans and nature …

Aviary Of The Reverend William J. Long, Shae Lewis Warnick

Theses and Dissertations

Humans perceive the natural world in a subjective and sensual way, yet over time science has turned the study of nature into a progressively objective pursuit. The Aviary of the Reverend William J. Long is an installation of anthropomorphic bird dolls that examines the roles of science and sentiment in our interactions with the natural world.

The Jutland Heath As A Literary Place Of Inheritance: Hans Christian Andersen, St. St. Blicher, And Jeppe Aakjær, Johs. Nørregaard Frandsen

The Bridge

The Jutland heath was, in a certain sense, created by Danish writers. It was writers such as Steen Steensen Blicher, Meir Goldschmidt, hans Christian Andersen, Jeppe Aakjær, and Johannes V. Jensen who, in their literary depictions, gave the heath a voice, image, and form that made it accessible as a place of experience for their own and future ages. In doing so, they created a place of inheritance—a dynamic, living place of experience that we can possess forever and refer to as part of our cultural inheritance. Today, the heather-clad heath of Jutland exists only in small clumps that have …

Heard In The Storm, M. A.Y. Greenhalgh , Text, Myrna J. Layton , Music, John C. Leavitt , Arrangment

Faculty Publications

The rain was falling, the winders were calling, The clouds swept over the sky, When 'mid the alarm of darkness and storm A shower of song swept by; ...

The Living Earth: A Nineteenth-Century Latter-Day Saint Perspective, J. Michael Hunter

Faculty Publications

By studying the worldview of Mormons living in the nineteenth century, we can better understand their interpretation of nature and their relationship to it. For Mormons of that era, the earth was alive and deeply affected by the attitudes and actions of the humans living upon it. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints spoke frequently of the earth, its nature, and its relationship to humanity. They referred to the earth in anthropomorphic terms. It was a living orb endowed with intelligence and feelings. The earth’s life paralleled that of the humans who lived on it. So entwined were the lives of the earth …

What Crawls Beneath, Brent L. Gneiting

Theses and Dissertations

Nature is full of mysterious creatures which fascinate and spark imagination. In my final project, What Crawls Beneath, I take a closer look at what drives my interest in creatures that simultaneously attract and repel. Drawing on inspiration from parasites and dinosaurs, I was able to create a piece that represents the danger and beauty that nature so masterfully brings together. The importance of process is discussed as I consider the traditional methods of working with clay and how they affect the outcome of the artwork.

Cross-Cultural Ecotheology In The Poetry Of Li-Young Lee, Sienna Miquel Palmer Dittmer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the cross-cultural ecotheology of contemporary American poet Li-Young Lee by looking at the intersection of the human, the natural, and the sacred in his poetry. Close readings of Lee's poetic encounters with roses, persimmons, trees, wind, and light through the lens of Christianity and Daoism illustrate the way Lee is able to merge the Eastern concepts of interconnection and mutual harmony with Western ideas of sacredness and divinity. This discussion places Lee in direct conversation with modern and contemporary ecopoets who use the creative energy of language to express our moral and ethical responsibility to the world …

Redefining Self In The Midst Of "Things": Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Kristin Lowe

Theses and Dissertations

In this essay, I examine the role of material culture in Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping (1980) to understand how the prominent presence of material culture introduces complex questions about the relationships among objects, reality, and the self. By recognizing objects' fluidity of meaning, Housekeeping offers its characters a way to see their individuality and conceptions of reality in a similar state of flux. Significantly, it is in the act of recognizing that the socially accepted uses of objects are not necessarily "natural" parts of existence, and, like elements of the natural world, the meanings and uses of these items are …

Earth Forms, Janelle Marie Tullis Mock

Theses and Dissertations

Earth Forms narrates and explains the Masters Project Exhibition by the same name. The sculptures included in the exhibition, Earth Forms, use a variety of personal symbols centered on one stylized human head. Some of the symbols included are antlers, branches, coral, leaves, plants and stones. Each of these symbols represents personal ideas of balance, growth and decay. They also represent the earth from which we are formed and the earth to which our bodies will return at the end of life.

The Level Of The Beasts That Perish: Animalized Text In Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's Helen Fleetwood, Christie Anne Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Although Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's 1839 social reform novel Helen Fleetwood has long been understood as a commentary on the dehumanizing effects of factory work, her use of animals to represent factory workers has not been considered in analyses of her depictions of dehumanization. Considering both the growing interest in the animal/human divide during the early nineteenth century and Tonna's own direct contributions to discussions about animals, in this essay I examine the role that animals play in negotiating definitions of humanity and nature in the novel. I argue that idealized, "Edenic" animals and corrupted, "industrial" animals are integral to Tonna's …

Modernity And The Good Death: Heidegger And Jose, Anna M. Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will analyze José Clemente Orozco's mural The Epic of American Civilization in terms of the problem of suffering. It will focus specifically on two panels, “Human Sacrifice in Ancient Times” and “Human Sacrifice in Modern Times.” This analysis will comprehend not only the works of art within their historical context, but also within Martin Heidegger's philosophical discussion of the question of suffering. Heidegger presents a unique perspective on the question of human suffering when he writes that Western humans have forgotten how to “dwell.” This dwelling is defined by Heidegger's novel conception of ontology as relational rather than …

Dairy Culture: Industry, Nature And Liminality In The Eighteenth-Century English Ornamental Dairy, Ashlee Whitaker

Theses and Dissertations

The vogue for installing dairies, often termed "fancy" or "polite" dairies, within the gardens of wealthy English estates arose during the latter half of the eighteenth century. These polite dairies were functional spaces in which aristocratic women engaged, to varying degrees, in bucolic tasks of skimming milk, churning and molding butter, and preparing creams. As dairy work became a mode of genteel activity, dairies were constructed and renovated in the stylish architectural modes of the day and expanded to serve as spaces of leisure and recreation. Dairies were often lavishly outfitted to create a delicate and clean atmosphere, a fancy …

Animism In Whitman: "Multitudes" Of Interpretations?, Rachelle Helene Woodbury

Theses and Dissertations

Walt Whitman used animistic techniques in his poetry and prose, specifically "Song of the Redwood Tree," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and Specimen Days. The term animism can be traced to the Latin root of the word, anime, which connotes a "soul" or "vitality." So, when one is talking about animistic techniques, one is speaking of the (metaphoric or realistic) ensoulment of natural objects. In the wake of a growing global crisis modern scholarship has begun reexamining the implications of this belief; often it introduces ambiguities into an otherwise comfortable relationship of unquestioned human domination. In Specimen Days, Whitman …

Keeping Gardens: Poetry And Essay, Deja Anne Earley

Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis includes two creative non-fiction essays and twenty-two poems, introduced by a critical essay that examines my work. The poems and essays share an origin in personal experience as well as an interest in language. Specifically, the poems and essays explore issues of family, relationships, spirituality, and observations of the natural world. The introductory essay discusses my interest in re-fashioning individual vision through the act of writing, relating to Helene Cixous's idea of creating a "portrait of God" through the act of art. The essay also examines the connections between the genres of creative non-fiction and poetry, in …

“There Is Nothing More Divine Than These, Except Man”: Thomas Moffett And Insect Sociality, Monique Bourque

Quidditas

When Thoomas Moffett wrote in the Theater of Insects that "there is nothing more divine than these, except Man," he asked his readers some pointed questions about insects, and made some blunt statements:

where is Nature more to be seen than in the smallest matters, where she is entirely all? for in great bodies the workmanship is easie, the matter being ductile; but in these that are so small and despicable, and almost nothing, what care? how great is the effect of it? how unspeakable is the perfection? ... Do you require Prudence? regard the Ant; Do you desire Justice? …

Waking, Donnell Hunter

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Natural Law And Chaucer's Physician's Tale, Jay Ruud

Quidditas

Of all the Canterbury Tales, the Physician's Tale may well be the least appreciated. Its subject matter is distasteful in itself–a despicable judge abuses his position of public trust and authority by deliberately setting out to obtain an innocent young virgin as an object of lust, while too frustrate the even the victim's father beheads her after cold-blooded premeditation. But if that were not enough, the tale contains at least two apparently incongruous digressions, and the storyteller appends a moral that must make the reader suspect the Narrator has not been listening to his own story. Perhaps a modern …

Nature And The Bourgeois Poet, Arthur Henry King

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

At Nepaug Reservoir, Matt Mosman

Inscape

No abstract provided.

The Historical Development Of Wasatch Trails In Salt Lake County, Clyde Brian Hardy

Theses and Dissertations

In this study investigation was made concerning the etiology of the foot trails that thread their way through Wasatch Forest lands in Salt Lake county. The time delimitation was 1847 to 1975.

The origin of the majority of these trails dates back to the nineteenth century and is closely tied to the efforts of pioneers who labored to wrest a living from semi-arid land. Early lumbering, livestock operations, mining activities, water collection systems, and pioneer recreation all provided impetus for trail development. In a sense these trails are a kind of anthology of human endeavor.

Passing into the twentieth century …