This book is, essentially, a reading of
the works of John Ruskin, including his neglected poems and early
prose writings. In it I tried to bring about a fresh awareness of his
career as an interpreter of landscape, and to conceive of landscape
as a filter of human meaning, a resourceful and varying construction
of social, aesthetic and theological significance. The book studies
the correlation in Ruskin's work between the Reformed theology of his
religious tradition and the Romantic poetics of literature that he
sought to practice over a very long and eventful life. I tried here
to reconstruct the particular hermeneutic of landscape that Ruskin
developed, a vision of the natural world that depended equally upon
an Romantic/evangelical renovation of heart and eye and a remarkable
articulation of the typology of nature. Ruskin's own theoria.,
or contemplation of nature's text, the full-scale development of
which takes place in Modern Painters II, is revealed and
explored, inviting renewed understanding of works in his canon both
early and late, especially of certain chapters of such often
neglected works as Fors Clavigera, St. Mark's
Rest, and Deucalion. In reading his childhood sermons,
in particular, and in attempting to connect his early religious
training with his reading of the sacred meanings of natural scenes, I
hoped here to turn away from the too habitual secular responses to
his work, and by recovering the actual text of his manuscript
Diaries, to regain the lost theological emphasis of his
critical writing. But I would not wish to emphasize unduly this
religious element, for in my commitment to considering his faith
within the circle of his romantic influences, Nature's Covenant
is also a book about Victorian romanticism, sharing in the
current revaluation of Wordsworth's later career, and in renewed
scholarly attention to Sir Walter Scott.
Table of Contents:
Introduction***** 1. The House of the
Interpreter *****2. The Word and the Church
3. The Poetry of Nature *****4. A Fellowship of Blindness *****5. The
Covenant of Life
6. Heavenly Hopes***** Conclusion:
The Typology of Atonement
A selected list of my publications and presentations related to this work:
"Ruskin's Remains: Archive, Text, and Autobiography,"
for the session, Bibliography and Textual Criticism,
SCMLA, San Antonio, Texas, 2 November 1996
"Representing Ruskin," Keynote Address, John Ruskin and
Victorian
Culture, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 10-12 October 1996
"'Types and Prophecies of the Old Testament': A Critical
Introduction
to Dr. Pusey's Manuscript," Fellows Lecture, Pusey House,
Oxford, 6 May 1991.
"Christographia: The Victorian Typology of the Atonement,"
Fellows Lecture, Pusey House, Oxford, 29 April 1991
"Criticism and Prophecy," Christianity and Literature,
39 (Spring 1990): 283-92.
"Bunyan Among the Victorians: Macaulay, Froude,Ruskin,"
Literature and Theology, 3 (March 1989): 77-94.
"Bunyan and 19th-Century Evangelical Theology," for the
conference,
Bunyan and Puritanism, Centre for the Study of Literature and
Theology,
University of Durham, 16-18 March 1988.
"Hermeneutic and Aporia: Beyond Formalism Once More,"
Christianity and Literature, 38 (Fall 1988): 5-17.
"Scott, Ruskin, and the Landscape of Autobiography,"
Studies in Romanticism, 26 (Winter 1987): 549-72.
"Ruskin, Darwin, and The Crisis of Natural Forms,"
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens: Revue du Centre d'Etudes
et de Recherches Victoriennes et Edouardiennes,
No. 25 (April 1987): 7-24.
"The Structure of Ruskin's Fors Clavigera," Prose
Studies,
9 (December 1986): 71-85.
"Ruskin's Apocalypse," The Arnoldian, 13 (Winter 1985/1986)
pp. 33-41;
(reviewing Raymond E. Fitch, The Poisoned Sky: Myth and
Apocalypse
in Ruskin [1982]).
"Hunting Ruskin," The Arnoldian, 12 (Fall 1984), pp.
46-51;
(reviewing John Dixon Hunt, The Wider Sea: A Life of John Ruskin
[
[1982], and The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the
Imagination
of John Ruskin, eds. Hunt and Holland [1982]).
"Ruskin in His Time," The Arnoldian: A Review of
Mid-Victorian
Culture, 10 (Spring 1983), pp.69-73; (reviewing New Approaches
to Ruskin, ed. Robert Hewison [1981]).
Follow these links to additional resources:
Photographs of John Ruskin (under construction)
Ruskin Foundation, Lancaster University
Cambridge University Press CD-Rom edition of Ruskin's Complete Works