Susan Howe’s Historical Ethics of Space and Puritan Spirituality: An Ecofeminist Reading of Souls of the Labadie Tract

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Notes

¹ For a further view on Christian spirituality and ecofeminism, see Sandra Schneiders’s “The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline.”

² Howe’s perception of poetry as clothing bears similarities with Heidegger’s interpretation of poetic language. In his essay “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,” the German philosopher states: “Language gives expression to what is most pure and most concealed, as well as to what is confused and common” (Elucidations 55). However, whereas Howe presents poetry as an act of love that shields us from our powerlessness, for Heidegger it revolves around the concealment and un-concealment of beings. That is, ordinary language serves to convey our everyday experience, while poetry reveals profound truths about the world. For a further view on Heidegger, ecology and language, see his essays “Letter on Humanism” and “The Question Concerning Technology.”

³ For further information on the presence of the Labadists in Maryland, see The Journal of Jasper Danckaerts.

⁴ Christographia focuses on the two natures of Christ, the human and the divine.

⁵ The term “land ethic” was coined for the first time by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949), a book based on the relationship of humans with the land. See Callicott’s Companion to a Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and critical essays.