CSULA ENGL 560: Spring 2013

Blog Review For Week 8

Zully: “Sketch with a Purpose”

Work: John Muir and Alison Byerly

Main point: To suggest that Nature has been seen by all of us with a purpose whether our actions are in or out of human culture; often that purpose is due to commodity which is a harsh view that everyone tries to distance. But the bottom line would be on human control which provokes change in our thinking while the argument continues between the preservationist and the conservationists. Therefore Muir is part of the controlling force to bring forth Nature the way he perceived it, as it was those behind the picturesque movement.

William Cooper: “Suburban Fields Forever”

Work: Cosgrove “Sublime Nature”

William references at least three significant points that have a domino effect: The artist as tradesman to fulfill the middle-class’ demands, the artist as genius-organic, and the sublime as an ideology. William wants to see the romantics’ works ‘in a new light’ which suggests there is more to poetry. This opens up a discussion on how autonomous the artist wants or can be from the market. Though artists’ prestige suffered with the Industrial Revolution, it was beneficial in that their works were more widely distributed. Still they fought to retain “the privileged status of their work” (Cosgrove 225) and defended it by asserting their works disclosed truth “against the falsity of a social order” (Cosgrove 226). Artists were suspicious of the “British social formation” (Cosgrove 223) that they themselves had to function within. In their suspicion they created the sublime, claiming it was exclusively in their own construction of nature, paintings, poetry, literature, and human emotions. Once the romantic works are embedded in society, the romantic landscape inevitably became an ideology (Cosgrove 234).

Amber Vasquez

Work: John Muir My First Summer in the Sierra

Amber writes about Muir’s notion of ‘utility’ and the comparison between a shepherd in Scotland and one from the states. Amber’s observation suggests her connection with Nature has been not only with flowers, bugs, and school assignments but with her mother. This is meaningful because Amber’s memories of human nurture and recollection of community are based on the natural world. It speaks to how Romantic ideology survived in how it envisioned human emotions coupled with natural world aesthetics as sources for meaning. On the subject of utility, Muir reminisces on how Indian women were harvesting their crops, laughing, and enjoying the task (Muir 135). For Muir, the value of the landscape is not only in that it feeds people but that it produces satisfaction. A sustainable relationship to the land brings joy while also providing viable ways to trade and build relationships with neighbors: “The tribes of the west flank of the range trade acorns for worms and pine nuts” (Muir 136). Muir understands the ecosystem is bound up with human life and sees that the two can coexist.

Rosanna Cacace – General Thoughts on Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra

Rosanna brings two ideas Muir carefully overlays through his writings: the landscapes blooming with life and the relationship music has with Nature and the sublime. While Rosanna writes “the natural setting as if it is alive and connected,” her recollection matches Muir’s experiences in the wilderness. He sees the mountains, though non-living, full of life “as the features of a human face” (Muir, Chapter XI, 154). This comparison evokes familiarity between Man and the outside world. In fact Muir is doing the work of the Romantics who not only make Nature as the background for Man’s history but made Nature part of human emotions. One would recall in Wordsworth’s poem Michael, the relationship Michael had with the landscape as his son, Luke, was sent to the urban settings. Like Wordsworth, Muir is not settling for a pastoral view but one in which Man can live, laugh, and struggle.

Ryan Briggs - Reflections on Muir's Curious Prose Style in My First Summer in the Sierra

Ryan provides a thoughtful discussion of how Muir’s language situates My First Summer in the Sierra in between Romanticism and scientific discourse. Muir narrates a unique genre that is interested in the wonder of nature along with an in-depth account of biology and ecosystems. Whereas a human encounter with the sublime in Romantic art could bring awe and fear, Muir’s account will invite an intimate relationship with the smallest of creatures, like insects, with the greatest of interest. When writing of poison ivy, Muir writes that it is a plant with few friends, describing a pesky plant to humans as one that is also a social creature. And while scientific discourse may appear rational and detached, Muir makes it personal. Muir combines something of science and romanticism while writing in a style quite different from both. Ryan’s use of the word “curious” to describe Muir’s tone echoes how Muir is an explorer who is a mature intellectual and at the same time full of the wonderment of a child encountering nature for the first time: “How interesting everything is! Every rock, mountain, stream, plant, lake, lawn, forest, garden, bird, beast, insect seems to call and invite us to come and learn something of its history and relationship” (Muir 145).

Alfred Valrie

Work: My First Summer in the Sierra and “The American Forests”

Alfred’s most interesting observation is that ‘Muir becomes one with nature,’ which is subject to many interpretations. One can see it as if Muir has left humanity to harbor within nature, even turning down a position at Harvard offered by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Muir emancipates himself from society to join God’s nature. Perhaps, Alfred is suggesting that the Noble Savage has been returned to its origin. But what was there in nature that Muir wanted so badly? Do you want to go there too and for how long? In the wilderness is found flora, fauna, bugs, and snow, living and non-living things, and drastic climates, all except people. Was Muir tired of humanity? Perhaps Muir fell in love with Nature and fell out of love with humanity. Muir was a fervent follower of Emerson and Henry David Thoreau who wrote about self-reliance and the purity of being individual. Muir’s work fits in a model of self-reliance as he lives in the wilderness with too little to survive while he plays the role of the good Adam, doing what Adam failed to do. Alfred writes that Muir gives ‘anthropomorphic qualities’ to living things in the solitude of Nature, which can be seen as Muir channeling Adam in the Garden of Eden before Eve.  

Joseph Mottola: “John Muir’s Environmentalism”

Ignorant of Muir’s book and a little confused about how to classify it, Joseph creates a new category for it: philosophical travel literature/nature porn.  Muir travels, while offering thoughtful interpretations of what he sees and does – all the while engaging in an orgiastic encounter with nature.  Nature is like a lover and a god, and accordingly he worships it.

Jane Dubzinski: “Romantic Paintings, Sublime Landscape”

Jane focuses on the tension between Romantic artists, nature, and society, using Cosgrove’s analysis.  In making the natural world and human beings resources for exploitation subjected to market forces, capitalism divided humans and the environment.  Society became a place of mechanical production and profit, so the Romantics sought unspoiled nature as a place where they could escape alienation.  Specifically, they sought the sublime, experienced through sight.  Using Friedrich’s painting "The Wanderer Above the Sea and Fog," she explores the complexities of humans in nature: Is man saved or threatened by nature, united to or separate from nature, subordinate to or superior to nature?

Yuliana Valdes: “The Picturesque is Pure Intentionality”

Yuliana elucidates Byerly’s article on the artificiality and constructedness of the image of the national parks.  To attract visitors, the park service wants the park to seem to be wilderness.  However, more appropriate to the way the parks function is the category of the picturesque.  The wilderness can only be wild if people are not there to tame it.  However, paradoxically, people want to go to the wilderness for leisure and aesthetically view it as wilderness. The wilderness is available to all, but they must have the leisure and money to travel.  Thus the wilderness is actively created to offer people the picturesque under the guise of the sublime.

Rabelais: John Muir: The Original Tree-Hugger Reignites Class Divide

Rabelais highlights the class tensions in Muir’s book.  Muir doesn’t idealize the shepherd. He portrays him as a hired worker who is not particularly fond of the sheep and not receptive to the beauty of nature.  Muir implies a certain training or refinement of the sensibility is required to perceive the wonders of nature.  Muir cannot tolerate the impoverishment of their diet, while the hardier workers can.  Ironically, Muir requires some of the benefits of civilization, like bread, to enjoy the wilderness.

Jeff Anderson: “A Reflection on My First Summer in the Sierra”

Jeff examines some of metaphors of Muir’s work.  His religious rhetoric includes language and symbols from the Bible: the flood, for example; the natural world as our inheritance; human beings as sheep who cannot handle freedom and who are in awe of the sublime.  Based on Cosgrove’s discussion of the sublime, Jeff observes that by applying the sublime to perception of the natural world, Muir implies that it is accessible to all people, whereas formerly it was associated with the majesty and solemnity of epic literature, which mainly the rich and educated could read.