Religious Terms
As we looked the history of outdoor, we found an interesting connection with spiritual topics. For example, Thoreau's Walden is largely about transcendentalism and his attempt to live life more fully, more introspectively and to become closer to God in the process.
Primitivism - Belief that nature or early cultures are superior to contemporary civilization.
Regenerate - Spiritual rebirth. Turning the ungodly and useless into something that benefits civilization.
Unregenerate - Not Spiritually reborn. Moral chaos. Ungodly and useless.
Deism - Belief in God on evidence of reason and nature. In nature, God is seen more clearly.
Pantheism - God is the ultimate reality. Man and the material universe are manifestations of this reality. Thus, nature is a manifestation of God.
Transcendentalism - A philosophical movement (closely associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson) asserting that one can transcend everyday existence and become closer to God through nature and one's own intuition.
Painting (Aesthetic) Terms
Early American landscape painters helped create an environment in which wilderness was looked upon with favor. We looked at three landscape painting (or aesthetic) terms:
Beauty (Beautiful)- Balance, smoothness, delicacy, serene, calm landscapes. Idealized national forms in a balanced composition. The prime example is Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) a French landscape artist. Paintings are realistic but they are dreamlike. They are dripped with a golden or silver light. Through his art, Lorrain opened people to the beauties of nature. A century later, people might look for a picnic place that included elements from his paintings. The British would even model gardens after his paintings.
Picturesque. Rough, craggy trees and foliage, sharp contrasts of light & shadow. Emphasis is on variety and contrast rather than idealized nature. Since this aesthetic is between beautiful and sublime, evokes a sense of reality of the landscape. Can stimulate the mind and imagination.
Sublime. Vastness, terror. World of darkness and storm. Tremendous mountains, deep valleys, storms. The Sublime is also a term is also used as association of God & Nature. Deists believe that in nature we can see God most clearly.
Other Terms
Romanticism - An artistic and literary movement in the 1700's and early 1800's The movement embraced the beauties of nature. From an aesthetic standpoint, it placed emphasis on emotions which led to the idea of the sublime and picturesque which were adopted by landscape painters. It was important from an outdoor standpoint since it held nature and wilderness in high regard. Wilderness was no longer something that needed to be destroyed to make way for civilization but to be left in its natural state and enjoyed.
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