"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I
lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house
which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond..." Henry
David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a leading figure in the American
Transcendentalist movement and the era of U. S. literary emergence,
an intellectual with worldwide influence as essayist, social
thinker, naturalist-environmentalist, and sage. Thoreau's Walden,
an autobiographical narrative of his two-year sojourn in a
self-built lakeside cabin, is one of the most widely studied works
of American literature. It has generated scores of literary
imitations and thousands of neo-Walden experiments in
back-to-basics living, both rural and urban. Thoreau's great essay,
"Civil Disobedience," is a classic of American political activism
and a model for nonviolent reform movements around the world.
Thoreau also stands as an icon of modern American environmentalism,
the father of American nature writing, a forerunner of modern
ecology, and a harbinger of freelance spirituality combining the
wisdom of west and east. Thoreau is also a controversial figure.
From his day to ours, he has provoked sharply opposite reactions
ranging from reverence to dismissal. Scholars have regularly
offered conflicting assessments of the significance of his work,
the evolution of his thought, even the facts of his life. Some
disagreements are in the eye of the beholder, but many follow from
challenges posed by his own cross-grained idiosyncrasies. He was an
advocate for individual self-sufficiency who never broke away from
home, a self-professed mystic now also acclaimed as a pioneer
natural and applied scientist, and a seminal theorist of nonviolent
protest who defended the most notorious guerrilla fighter of his
day. All told, he remains a rather enigmatic figure both despite
and because we know so much about him, beginning with the
two-million-word journal he kept throughout his adult life. The
esteemed Thoreau scholar Lawrence Buell gives due consideration to
all these aspects of Thoreau's art and thought, framing key issues
and complexities in historical and literary context.
General
Imprint: |
Oxford UniversityPress
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2023 |
Authors: |
Lawrence Buell
(Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus)
|
Dimensions: |
210 x 140mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
144 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-19-768426-9 |
Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
LSN: |
0-19-768426-2 |
Barcode: |
9780197684269 |
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