Abstract

During his fifty-year career as a published author from 1864 to 1914, Muir used the word "Nature" in nearly every page he wrote. The dissertation historicizes and reconstructs the various meanings and metaphors contained in Muir's use of this key term, and sets Muir's own individual insights within a more international and multicultural context. Because Muir made significant, often simultaneous contributions to American literature, politics, science, and philosophy, his work provides a convenient focus for a richly interdisciplinary reconstruction of the ecology of American life during the Victorian era. ;Previous biographers have often sought to portray Muir as an isolated individualist utterly at odds with the prevailing ideologies of his era. On the contrary, Muir was a conscious participant in an international "golden age of ecology" at the close of the nineteenth century. Chapter One begins with a review of Muir's life-story in the context of the vast ecological changes he witnessed in Scotland, Wisconsin, and California. Following a stylistic analysis of his characteristic "planetary paragraphs," the chapter concludes with a discussion of the central role of Muir's nature writing within the traditional canon of American literature. Chapter Two focuses on the illustrations which accompanied Muir's prose in book form, and which framed the public image of both John Muir and the Ecology of Western Art in the popular press. Chapter Three focuses on the tradition of scientific travel narratives in which Muir was a self-conscious participant. Chapter Four traces the origins of Muir's preservationist prose in American political history from Washington to Roosevelt, as well as the nature of "Americanism" as defined by Heidegger in "The Question Concerning Technology." Chapter 5 opens with a historical survey of definitions of "nature" in 1871, moves on to compare Muir's prose to leading women authors of his own era, and concludes with a frank discussion of the racist overtones implicit in much of Muir's writing as evidenced by his last, late voyages to South America, Africa, and Asia. The final result is a fuller, more human, and ultimately more inspiring understanding of Muir's work from a postmodern ecological perspective