An Arcadian Vision is about spirituality and faith. Author John W. Ekstedt presents faith as something enhanced through the exercise of the spirit. Faith is imagined as a real quality of life that can be acquired and improved upon through spiritual growth. Faith, as a gift of God and as an attribute of human beings, exists in time and space. People carry it with them wherever they are and exhibit it in the way they present themselves or in the actions they take. It is made better with practice, and many people go to specific places for the purpose of growing in it. An Arcadian Vision was written in such a place. The original Arcadia was a retreat in the Peloponnese Mountains of ancient Greece. It was considered a place of great beauty and pastoral repose. Over time the word Arcadia has come to refer to an ideal suitable for writing in poetry or prose. To be Arcadian is to be a pleasing presence in an imperfect world. An Arcadian Vision is prose emerging from a place for spiritual exercise in the northern Rocky Mountains of Canada. It is about church as a means by which people improve their faith. It examines how people do the exercises that give form to their faith.

An Arcadian Vision is about spirituality and faith. Author John W. Ekstedt presents faith as something enhanced through the exercise of the spirit. Faith is imagined as a real quality of life that can be acquired and improved upon through spiritual growth. Faith, as a gift of God and as an attribute of human beings, exists in time and space. People carry it with them wherever they are and exhibit it in the way they present themselves or in the actions they take. It is made better with practice, and many people go to specific places for the purpose of growing in it. An Arcadian Vision was written in such a place. The original Arcadia was a retreat in the Peloponnese Mountains of ancient Greece. It was considered a place of great beauty and pastoral repose. Over time the word Arcadia has come to refer to an ideal "suitable for writing in poetry or prose". To be Arcadian is to be a pleasing presence in an imperfect world. An Arcadian Vision is prose emerging from a place for spiritual exercise in the northern Rocky Mountains of Canada. It is about church as a means by which people improve their faith. It examines how people do the exercises that give form to their faith.

This book is about Arcadia and the pastoral tradition; what it has meant for successive generations and their vision of the landscape, as well as the implications this has had for its design and management. Today the concept of Arcadia, and way it has shaped our landscape, is dimly perceived and little understood by landscape architects and those responsible for the management of land. This is in marked contrast to previous centuries when the vision of Arcadia and the pastoral was implanted by education among the more privileged in society. Young men spent many hours translating and learning by rote the words of Virgil and other classical authors and on the Grand Tour they would be introduced to work of painters like Poussin and Claude and their interpretations of the Ideal pastoral landscape. Today Arcadia holds as powerful an influence as at any time in the past and it is important that we plan our urban environment in ways that harmonize with the natural world. Arcadian Visions provides an alternative landscape history for all those involved with the landscape - either through its design, management, use or enjoyment. It begins by examining the origins of Arcadia and the pastoral in the classical poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, and the effects of, and on, Christianity before outlining its development in renaissance Italy and subsequently in the Netherlands, America and England. It concludes by looking at how Arcadian ecology is bringing about a reappraisal of the pastoral in the 21st century.

Perhaps America's best environmental idea was not the national park but the garden cemetery, a use of space that quickly gained popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. Such spaces of repose brought key elements of the countryside into rapidly expanding cities, making nature accessible to all and serving to remind visitors of the natural cycles of life. In this unique interdisciplinary blend of historical narrative, cultural criticism, and poignant memoir, Aaron Sachs argues that American cemeteries embody a forgotten landscape tradition that has much to teach us in our current moment of environmental crisis. Until the trauma of the Civil War, many Americans sought to shape society into what they thought of as an Arcadia--not an Eden where fruit simply fell off the tree, but a public garden that depended on an ethic of communal care, and whose sense of beauty and repose related directly to an acknowledgement of mortality and limitation. Sachs explores the notion of Arcadia in the works of nineteenth-century nature writers, novelists, painters, horticulturists, landscape architects, and city planners, and holds up for comparison the twenty-first century's--and his own--tendency toward denial of both death and environmental limits. His far-reaching insights suggest new possibilities for the environmental movement today and new ways of understanding American history.

This book is about Arcadia and the pastoral tradition; what it has meant for successive generations and their vision of the landscape, as well as the implications this has had for its design and management. Today the concept of Arcadia, and way it has shaped our landscape, is dimly perceived and little understood by landscape architects and those responsible for the management of land. This is in marked contrast to previous centuries when the vision of Arcadia and the pastoral was implanted by education among the more privileged in society. Young men spent many hours translating and learning by rote the words of Virgil and other classical authors and on the Grand Tour they would be introduced to work of painters like Poussin and Claude and their interpretations of the Ideal pastoral landscape. Today Arcadia holds as powerful an influence as at any time in the past and it is important that we plan our urban environment in ways that harmonize with the natural world. Arcadian Visions provides an alternative landscape history for all those involved with the landscape - either through its design, management, use or enjoyment. It begins by examining the origins of Arcadia and the pastoral in the classical poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, and the effects of, and on, Christianity before outlining its development in renaissance Italy and subsequently in the Netherlands, America and England. It concludes by looking at how Arcadian ecology is bringing about a reappraisal of the pastoral in the 21st century.

This novel from popular nineteenth-century American author William Dean Howells features a visitor from a mysterious distant island known as Altruria. The contrast between the utopian island community and conditions in 1890s America provides remarkable insight into the social and cultural issues facing the country then -- and now. A must-read for fans of utopian fantasy and science fiction. As part of our mission to publish great works of literary fiction and nonfiction, Sheba Blake Publishing Corp. is extremely dedicated to bringing to the forefront the amazing works of long dead and truly talented authors.

Australia has a fascinating history of visions. As the antipode to Europe, the continent provided a radically different and uniquely fertile ground for envisioning places, spaces and societies. Australia as the Antipodal Utopia evaluates this complex intellectual history by mapping out how Western visions of Australia evolved from antiquity to the modern period. It argues that because of its antipodal relationship with Europe, Australia is imagined as a particular form of utopia – but since one person’s utopia is, more often than not, another’s dystopia, Australia’s utopian quality is both complex and highly ambiguous. Drawing on the rich field of utopian studies, Australia as the Antipodal Utopia provides an original and insightful study of Australia’s place in the Western imagination.