Apocalyptic Geographies

How nineteenth-century Protestant evangelicals used print and visual media to shape American culture



In nineteenth-century America, apocalypse referred not to the end of the world but to sacred revelation, and geography meant both the physical landscape and its representation in printed maps, atlases, and pictures. In Apocalyptic Geographies, Jerome Tharaud explores how white Protestant evangelicals used print and visual media to present the antebellum landscape as a "sacred space" of spiritual pilgrimage, and how devotional literature influenced secular society in important and surprising ways.

Reading across genres and media--including religious tracts and landscape paintings, domestic fiction and missionary memoirs, slave narratives and moving panoramas--Apocalyptic Geographies illuminates intersections of popular culture, the physical spaces of an expanding and urbanizing nation, and the spiritual narratives that ordinary Americans used to orient their lives. Placing works of literature and visual art--from Thomas Cole's The Oxbow to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Henry David Thoreau's Walden--into new contexts, Tharaud traces the rise of evangelical media, the controversy and backlash it engendered, and the role it played in shaping American modernity.

Cum evanghelicii protestanti din secolul al XIX-lea au folosit mass-media scrisa si vizuala pentru a modela cultura americana In America din secolul al XIX-lea, apocalipsa nu se referea la sfarsitul lumii, ci la revelatia sacra, iar geografia insemna atat peisajul fizic, cat si reprezentarea acestuia in harti tiparite, atlasuri, si imagini. In Apocalyptic Geographies, Jerome Tharaud exploreaza modul in care evanghelistii protestanti albi au folosit mass-media scrisa si vizuala pentru a prezenta peisajul antebelic ca un „spatiu sacru” al pelerinajului spiritual si modul in care literatura devotionala a influentat societatea seculara in moduri importante si surprinzatoare. -inclusiv tracturi religioase si picturi peisagistice, fictiuni domestice si memorii misionare, naratiuni despre sclavi si panorame in miscare - Apocalyptic Geographies ilumineaza intersectiile culturii populare, spatiile fizice ale unei natiuni in expansiune si urbanizare si naratiunile spirituale pe care americanii obisnuiti le foloseau pentru a-si orienta vieti.