The Hudson River Valley was the first iconic American landscape. Beginning as early as the 1820s, artists and writers found new ways of thinking about the human relationship with the natural world along the Hudson. Here, amid the most dramatic river and mountain scenery in the eastern United States, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper created a distinctly American literature, grounded in folklore and history, that contributed to the emergence of a sense of place in the valley. Painters, led by Thomas Cole, founded the Hudson River School, widely recognized as the first truly national style of art. As the century advanced and as landscape and history became increasingly intertwined in the national consciousness, an aesthetic identity took shape in the region through literature, art, memory, and folklore-even gardens and domestic architecture. In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts this story of America's idealization of the Hudson Valley during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schuyler's story unfolds during a time of great change in American history. At the very moment when artists and writers were exploring the aesthetic potential of the Hudson Valley, the transportation revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism were transforming the region. The first generation of American tourists traveled from New York City to Cozzens Hotel and the Catskill Mountain House in search of the picturesque. Those who could afford to live some distance from jobs in the city built suburban homes or country estates. Given these momentous changes, it is not surprising that historic preservation emerged in the Hudson Valley: the first building in the United States preserved for its historic significance is Washington's Headquarters in Newburgh. Schuyler also finds the seeds of the modern environmental movement in the transformation of the Hudson Valley landscape. Richly illustrated and compellingly written, Sanctified Landscape makes for rewarding reading. Schuyler expertly ties local history to national developments, revealing why the Hudson River Valley was so important to nineteenth-century Americans-and why it is still beloved today.

We now live in the time of the Gaian hierophant. This is the one who reveals and shows us how to relate to the sacred aspects of Gaia, our planet. Who is this hierophant? Each of us, when we join the campaign with Gaia against the desecration of our natural environment. But first we have to discover what the Earth really is. The Earth's thousands of sacred sites hold a secret: they are functional parts of the planet's geomantic body, consciousness nodes in the Earth's subtle body. Each veils a Light temple, each once known widely and remembered in myth, and Welcome to Your Designer Planet! documents 165 different kinds. The Earth is not an accident of the cosmos, but was designed specifically for humans as an extended Mystery temple primed to support and enhance our greater awareness. And the designers intended that humans help maintain it. Want to help the ecosystem and modulate global warming and climate change? Plug yourself into the Earth's Light grid through your nearest sacred site and start helping. Earth Mysteries researcher Richard Leviton presents a working model of the Earth's geomantic reality based on 24 years of research. The world's myths are the doorway into this fantastic domain of the Earth's visionary geography, showing us where to go and what to do and even what kinds of spiritual beings to expect to see. The future of the Earth is in our hands. Here are some pages from its design manual showing us how to fine-tune our wonderful host planet.

Living on an island at the edge of the known world, the medieval Irish were in a unique position to examine the spaces of the North Atlantic region and contemplate how geography can shape a people. This book is the first full-length study of medieval Irish topographical writing. It situates the theories and poetics of Irish place – developed over six centuries in response to a variety of political, cultural, religious and economic changes – in the bigger theoretical picture of studies of space, landscape, environmental writing and postcolonial identity construction. Presenting focused studies of important literary texts by authors from Ireland and Britain, it shows how these discourses influenced European conceptions of place and identity, as well as understandings of how to write the world.

In the dominant world-view of the Western Middle Ages, natura evoked divine power as manifested in creation. Nature was an all-pervasive force, synonymous with God and his visible handiwork, but also a cosmic principle associated with fate and predestination in the Neoplatonic tradition. This volume of student essays tackles nature in a range of physical and metaphysical guises, always centred on its representation in medieval English literature. It contains studies of the visible natural world in elegiac, homiletic, and apocalyptic literature, but it also addresses other faces of nature, from the naked human form to the medieval reception of ancient ideas about free will, and closes with a comparative analysis of the nature of wisdom in Old English and The Lord of the Rings.

Many fundamental studies of the origins of states have built upon landscape data, but an overall study of the Near Eastern landscape itself has never been attempted. Spanning thousands of years of history, the ancient Near East presents a bewildering range of landscapes, the understanding of which can greatly enhance our ability to infer past political and social systems. Tony Wilkinson now shows that throughout the Holocene humans altered the Near Eastern environment so thoroughly that the land has become a human artifact, albeit one that retains the power to shape human societies. In this trailblazing bookÑthe first to describe and explain the development of the Near Eastern landscape using archaeological dataÑWilkinson identifies specific landscape signatures for various regions and periods, from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth to sixth millennium B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D. From Bronze Age city-states to colonized steppes, these signature landscapes of irrigation systems, tells, and other features changed through time along with changes in social, economic, political, and environmental conditions. By weaving together the record of the human landscape with evidence of settlement, the environment, and social and economic conditions, Wilkinson provides a holistic view of the ancient Near East that complements archaeological excavations, cuneiform texts, and other conventional sources. Through this overview, culled from thirty years' research, Wilkinson establishes a new framework for understanding the economic and physical infrastructure of the region. By describing the basic attributes of the ancient cultural landscape and placing their development within the context of a dynamic environment, he breaks new ground in landscape archaeology and offers a new context for understanding the ancient Near East.

By analyzing ways in which indigenous cultures described the American Southwest, David Teague persuasively argues against the destructive approach that Americans currently take to the region. Included are Native American legends and Spanish and Hispanic literature. As he traces ideas about the desert, Teague shows how literature and art represent the Southwest as a place to be sustained rather than transformed. 14 illustrations.

The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England reflects upon the boundaries between the natural and the otherworldly in early modern England as they were understood by the people of the time. The book places supernatural beliefs and events in the context of the English Reformation to show how early modern people reacted to the world of unseen spirits and magical influences. It sets out the conceptual foundations of early modern encounters with the supernatural, and shows how occult beliefs penetrated almost every aspect of life. Darren Oldridge considers many of the spiritual forces that pervaded early modern England: an immanent God who sometimes expressed Himself through ‘signs and wonders’ and the various lesser inhabitants of the world of spirits including ghosts, goblins, demons and angels. He explores human attempts to comprehend, harness or accommodate these powers through magic and witchcraft, and the role of the supernatural in early modern science. This book presents a concise and accessible up-to-date synthesis of the scholarship of the supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England. It will be essential reading for students of early modern England, religion, witchcraft and the supernatural.