Space Between

Annie Dillard, a foremost practitioner of the literary epiphany, has become a representative of a necromantic movement that combines the ecological interest of wilderness literature with the aesthetics of a highly stylized literature. This first full-length study of the Pulitzer prize-winning essayist considers her as wilderness philosopher, religious mystic, professional critic, and arch-romantic.Sandra Humble Johnson moves Dillard from the category of nature writer to the area of aesthetics as she examines the importance of literary epiphany-a distinctive type of "e;illumination"e;-to her work. She then explores how Dillard, through her own peculiar use of language, describes and creates these moments of illumination, or "e;dots"e; of self, for the reader.Johnson also reveals Dillard's relationship with other writers who practiced this same literary device: William Wordsworth in his "e;spots of time,"e; T.S. Eliot and his "e;still points,"e; and Gerard Manley Hopkins through his "e;inscape."e; In addition, Johnson shows how the reader experiences a similar yet personal epiphany in sharing the writer's moment of illumination and further interprets how Dillard's absorption with pain, violence, and beauty is resolved in the nature of language itself.