ABSTRACT
For less sectarian writers like John Lloyd Stephens, Bayard Taylor, George William Curtis, and William Cullen Bryant, as well as for the "irreverent" Twain, J. Ross Browne, David Dorr, and John William Deforest, resistance to prior accounts of the Holy Land also includes textual engagement, but more importantly emphasizes a doggedly affirmed empiricism an ability to see the sacred landscape of Palestine with fresh, unprejudiced eyes. The contribution that further study of Holy Land travel writing can make to larger fields of American Literature and American Studies lies in picture of interpenetrating cultures that these works present. The decisions by Bayard Taylor and William Cullen Bryant to adopt "Oriental" dress after their respective journeys to Middle East. The claim of experiential validity becomes especially important when we survey the literature of American Holy Land travel, since the experience elucidated in these texts is often portrayed as a privileged insight into divinity itself.
