American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse In Early Pennsylvania

Date
2022-04-18
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Abstract

This dissertation is the first full-length scholarly analysis of Johannes Kelpius (1667-1707), a transatlantic radical Protestant theologian from Transylvania who settled in Philadelphia in 1694. This dissertation reads the life and legacy of Kelpius to understand the Protestant reception of Hermetic literature in the seventeenth century and how this reception shaped the Protestant response to climate change during the same period. The dissertation goes on to explore Hermetic Protestantism in the Americas during the period, focusing on the areas of southeastern Pennsylvania where Kelpius and his colleagues settled at the turn of the eighteenth century. The final chapters turn to Kelpius’s contested and misunderstood legacy in American literature and history since his death in 1707, ultimately concluding that the transformation of environmental knowledge that Kelpius lived through rendered him incomprehensible to many of his later Enlightenment readers.

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EMBARGO NOTE: This item is embargoed until 2028-05-01
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Type
Thesis
Keywords
Kelpius, Johannes, Pennsylvania, Environment, Apocalypse, Pietism, Western Esotericism,
Citation

Grieve-Carlson, Timothy Ryan. "American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse In Early Pennsylvania." (2022) Diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113524.

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