Lee Smith

Born in Grundy, Virginia, in the coalfields of the southwestern section of the state, Lee Smith depicts an Appalachia steeped in family and community relationships, in supernatural and religious powers, and in musical and cultural traditions through which characters navigate a changing and modernizing world. Smith attended Hollins College, then a women’s college. While there, she studied with Louis Rubin, a leading scholar of southern literature; her classmates included a remarkable number of women who, like Smith, went on to pursue literary careers—for example, author Annie Dillard and literary scholars Lucinda MacKethon and Anne Goodwin Jones....

Lives and Visions

Mystical writers of Lives and Visions employ distinct, explicit strategies to evoke mystical experience in their audiences. Beyond claims of historical meaning and truths, the texts focus on the process of knowing and encounter with the divine. After tracing biblical and early historical resources, three case studies on Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Annie Dillard elucidate mystical writing techniques of visionary exegesis, narrative protagonist flexibility, and creative generative prose. This chapter interrogates how form works in authorizing claims, theological anthropology, and understanding of divine essence and encounter in the world. Embedded here is also an invitation to contemporary practitioners to carry on this artful work of mystical theology.

Conclusion

The conclusion deals with four pressing questions raised by the book—scientific, philosophical, theological, and ethical. Is this notion of a Great Conversation simply a fanciful idea or is it a truth whose time has come? How do we widen our skills in listening and responding to the “others”? How do we conceive of God as playing a role in this conversation? And given the current ecological crisis, what are the ethical implications of all this? Forest biologists like Suzanne Simard, Peter Wohlleben, and Robin Wall Kimmerer have done exciting work in researching the communicative capacities of trees. Creative efforts at interspecies communication in general have been pursued by Celia Deane-Drummond, Luther Burbank, Jim Nollman, and Buck Brannaman. Those who have explored God’s wild and creative relationship to nature include Annie Dillard, Wlater Kasper, and John Haught. Joanna Macy and Elizabeth Johnson emphasize the importance of our listening to the rest of the natural world as a starting point in the exercise of ecological responsibility.

Where the Twin Oceans of Beauty and Horror Meet: An Aesthetic Analysis of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek // Donde los océanos gemelos de belleza y horror se encuentran: Un análisis estético de Pilgrim at Tinker Creek de Annie Dillard

Although Annie Dillard's masterpiece Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) has conventionally been analyzed as a piece of Nature writing embedded in the Thoreauvian tradition, little has been said about the aesthetic concepts that underlie the text and Dillard's entire take on Nature. This research applies the concepts of Baumgarten's “science of sensible knowledge” to the narrator's perceptions in order to demonstrate that Dillard's ultimate message is the acceptance of Nature, even in its seemingly inhuman places. The study begins with the analysis of the structure of the book, which outlines two types of experience of Nature. Thevia positivais related to the aesthetic concept of beauty and to an active participation of the subject in the aesthetic experience of seeing as a verbalization, whereas the via negativais linked to the concept of the sublime and the experience of seeing as a letting go. Furthermore, the analysis employsand develops Linda Smith's valid conclusions (1991) to show how these two paths join in a third mystical and aesthetic path, the via creativa. By leaving the interpretation of natural signs open-ended, Dillard's modern vision enables the author's total acceptance of Nature's freedom, which fosters its beautiful intricacy as well as its horrible fecundity. Thus, Nature's creativity becomes the basis for an aesthetics of Nature's wholeness, which leadshuman beings to embrace the true essence of Nature, freed from anyprejudices.Resumen A pesar de que Pilgrim at Tinker River (1974), obra maestra de Annie Dillard, ha sido analizada convencionalmente como una pieza de literatura y medio ambiente incrustada en la corriente Thoreauviana y ha sido estudiada extensivamente, poco atención se le ha prestado a los conceptos estéticos que subyacen la obra y que pueden servir para comprender mejor la opinión de Dillard sobre la naturaleza. Por lo tanto, esta investigación aplica los conceptos de “ciencia del conocimiento sensible” de Baumgarten a la percepción del narrador con el fin de demostrar que el mensaje final de Dillard es la aceptación de la naturaleza, incluso en sus lugares aparentemente inhumanos. El estudio comienza con el análisis de la estructura del libro, que describe dos tipos de experiencia de la naturaleza relacionados con caminos místicos que llevan a Dios, dentro de la teología Neoplatónica. La vía positiva está asociada al concepto estético de la belleza y a la participación activa del sujeto en la experiencia estética de ver, la cual es definida como una verbalización. Por otra parte, la vía negativa está vinculada con el concepto de lo sublime y la experiencia de ver como un dejar ir. Además, el análisis emplea y desarrolla las válidas conclusiones de Linda Smith (1991) para mostrar cómo estos dos caminos se unen en un tercer camino místico y estético, la vía creativa. Al dejar la interpretación de signos naturales abierta, la visión moderna de Dillard permite al autor la total aceptación de la libertad de la naturaleza, lo que fomenta su hermosa intrincación, así como su horrible fecundidad. Así, la creatividad de la naturaleza se convierte en la base para la estética de la naturaleza en su totalidad, lo que lleva a los seres humanos a aceptar y respetar la verdadera esencia de la naturaleza, libre de cualquier prejuicio.