Download or read book Dark Thoreau written by Richard Bridgman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry David Thoreau has suffered from a largely uncritical admiration of his roles as naturalist, economist, political theorist, and expository writer. The evidence this book presents substantially modifies our understanding of his performance of those roles. It draws heavily on the largely unknown territory of Thoreau's seven thousand pages of journals as well as his poetry, while at the same time subjecting passages from such familiar work as Walden to fresh interpretation. Dark Thoreau argues that Thoreau elected to associate himself with the American romantic movement as a form of rebellion from a Concord from which he was alienated. However, the affirmations of transcendentalism were often unavailable to him, so that he (and his writing) suffered the tensions of disharmony: animal life proved savage and sensual, the primitive wilderness alarming, and after the Indian failed him, only the militant John Brown furnished a surrogate Thoreau could enthusiastically support. Thoreau's frustrations manifested themselves not only in passive lamentations but also in expressions of aggression. The terms in which he cast his anger were often imagistically violent, involving a desire to injure, suffocate, drown, and blow up that which he despised. Even his most affirmative assertions about the world were likely to be tinged with doubt. Our preoccupation with Thoreau as the symbol of man in harmony with a benign wilderness has tended to divert us from the full dimensions of his mind. The present account of the dark Thoreau will require subsequent readers to add his savagery and pessimism to their sense of the man, to complicate this saint of the woods by accepting his doubt, his anger, and his fallibility.
Download or read book Black Walden written by Elise Lemire and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concord, Massachusetts, has long been heralded as the birthplace of American liberty and American letters. It was here that the first military engagement of the Revolutionary War was fought and here that Thoreau came to "live deliberately" on the shores of Walden Pond. Between the Revolution and the settlement of the little cabin with the bean rows, however, Walden Woods was home to several generations of freed slaves and their children. Living on the fringes of society, they attempted to pursue lives of freedom, promised by the rhetoric of the Revolution, and yet withheld by the practice of racism. Thoreau was all but alone in his attempt "to conjure up the former occupants of these woods." Other than the chapter he devoted to them in Walden, the history of slavery in Concord has been all but forgotten. In Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, Elise Lemire brings to life the former slaves of Walden Woods and the men and women who held them in bondage during the eighteenth century. After charting the rise of Concord slaveholder John Cuming, Black Walden follows the struggles of Cuming's slave, Brister, as he attempts to build a life for himself after thirty-five years of enslavement. Brister Freeman, as he came to call himself, and other of the town's slaves were able to leverage the political tensions that fueled the American Revolution and force their owners into relinquishing them. Once emancipated, however, the former slaves were permitted to squat on only the most remote and infertile places. Walden Woods was one of them. Here, Freeman and his neighbors farmed, spun linen, made baskets, told fortunes, and otherwise tried to survive in spite of poverty and harassment. With a new preface that reflects on community developments since the hardcover's publication, Black Walden reminds us that this was a black space before it was an internationally known green space and preserves the legacy of the people who strove against all odds to overcome slavery and segregation.
Download or read book Civil Disobedience written by Henry David Thoreau and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoreau advocates for nonviolent protest in his classic manifesto Motivated by his disgust with the US government, Henry David Thoreau’s seminal philosophical essay enjoins individuals to stand against the ruling forces that seek to erase their free will. It is the duty of a good citizen, he argues, not only to disobey a bad law, but also to protest an unjust government. His message of nonviolence and appeal to value one’s own conscience over political legislation have resonated throughout American and world history. Peppered with the author’s poetry and social commentary, Civil Disobedience has become a manifesto for civil dissidents, revolutionaries, and protestors everywhere. Indeed, originally so unpopular with readers that Thoreau was forced to buy back over half of the books from his publisher, this work has gone on to inspire the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Download or read book Dark Thoreau written by Richard Bridgman and published by . This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Henry David Thoreau written by Laura Dassow Walls and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-07-07 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[The author] traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and 'America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.' By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, [the author] presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him."--
Download or read book Picturing Thoreau written by Mark W. Sullivan and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we approach the bicentennial, in 2017, of the birth of Henry David Thoreau, there is considerable debate and confusion as to what he may, or may not have, contributed to American life and culture. Almost every American has heard of Thoreau, but only a few are aware that he was deeply engaged with most of the important issues of his day, from slavery to “Manifest Destiny” and the rights of the individual in a democratic society. Many of these issues are still affecting us today, as we move toward the second quarter of the twenty-first century. By studying how various American artists have chosen to portray Thoreauover the years since the publication of Walden in 1854, we can gain a clear understanding of how he has been interpreted (or misinterpreted) throughout the years since his death in 1862. But along the way, we might also find something useful, for our times, in the insights that Thoreau gained as he wrestled with the most urgent problems being experienced by American society in his day.
Download or read book Henry Thoreau written by Robert D. Richardson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.
Download or read book Henry Thoreau written by Robert D. Richardson Jr. and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two years Thoreau spent at Walden Pond and the night he spent in the Concord jail are among the most familiar features of the American intellectual landscape. In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on a retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.
Download or read book Thoreau s Meditations Walden Aurelius Du Bois Souls Walden and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius The Souls of Black Folk by W E B Du Bois written by Henry David Thoreau and published by Prabhat Prakashan. This book was released on 2024-06-22 with total page 765 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book 1: Immerse yourself in the contemplative prose of “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau.” Thoreau's transcendental work reflects on the simplicity of nature, individualism, and the call to resist unjust laws, inspiring readers to embrace a life of purposeful reflection and resistance. Book 2: Reflect on the wisdom of a Roman emperor with “Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius.” Aurelius's philosophical insights, penned in the form of personal reflections, offer timeless wisdom on virtue, self-discipline, and the pursuit of a meaningful life, providing a guide to ethical living through the challenges of the human experience. Book 3: Explore the profound and eloquent essays in “The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois.” Du Bois's seminal work addresses the complexities of race, identity, and social justice, presenting a collection of essays that eloquently captures the African American experience and advocates for equality and understanding in a divided society.
Download or read book Thoreau s Democratic Withdrawal written by Shannon L. Mariotti and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond in Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a recluse who emerged from solitude only occasionally to take a stand on the issues of his day. In Thoreau’s Democratic Withdrawal, Shannon L. Mariotti explores Thoreau’s nature writings to offer a new way of understanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden Pond. Drawing imaginatively from the twentieth-century German social theorist Theodor W. Adorno, she shows how withdrawal from the public sphere can paradoxically be a valuable part of democratic politics. Separated by time, space, and context, Thoreau and Adorno share a common belief that critical inquiry is essential to democracy but threatened by modern society. While walking, huckleberrying, and picking wild apples, Thoreau tries to recover the capacities for independent perception and thought that are blunted by “Main Street,” conventional society, and the rapidly industrializing world that surrounded him. Adorno’s thoughts on particularity and the microscopic gaze he employs to work against the alienated experience of modernity help us better understand the value of Thoreau’s excursions into nature. Reading Thoreau with Adorno, we see how periodic withdrawals from public spaces are not necessarily apolitical or apathetic but can revitalize our capacity for the critical thought that truly defines democracy. In graceful, readable prose, Mariotti reintroduces us to a celebrated American thinker, offers new insights on Adorno, and highlights the striking common ground they share. Their provocative and challenging ideas, she shows, still hold lessons on how we can be responsible citizens in a society that often discourages original, critical analysis of public issues.
Download or read book Henry David Thoreau written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry David Thoreau was a naturalist, transcendentalist, philosopher, and essayist. His views on civil disobedience and nature have become a part of the American character. This updated volume of the Bloom's Modern Critical Views series is a keenly detailed chronicle of the great thinker who will forever be known for his experiment in simple living documented in his work Walden.
Download or read book Thoreau s Country written by David R. Foster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape. Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of historical and social change. Thoreau's journals evoke not a wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today. From the journal: "I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy." --October 20, 1855
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau written by Joel Myerson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-06-30 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau is intended as an accessible guide to reading and understanding the works of Thoreau. Presenting essays by a distinguished array of contributors, the Companion is a valuable resource for historical and contextual material, whether on early writings like A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, on the monumental Walden, or on his assorted journals and later books. It also serves in some ways as a biographical guide, offering new insights into his turbulent publishing career, and his brief but extraordinarily original life. In short, the Companion helps the reader come to Thoreau's writings, as he would say, 'deliberately and reservedly' by suggesting how Thoreau uses language, how his biography informs his writing, how personal and historical influences shaped his career, and how his writings function as literary works.
Download or read book Thoreau His Home Friends and Books written by Annie Russell Marble and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thoreau s Morning Work written by H. Daniel Peck and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1994-08-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden, the only works Thoreau conceived and brought to conclusion as books, bear a distinctively important relation to each other and to his Journal, the document whose twenty-four-year composition encompasses their development. In a brilliant new book, H. Daniel Peck shows how these three works engage one another dialectically and how all of them participate in a larger project of imagination. "Morning work," a phrase from Walden, is the name Peck gives to this larger project. by it he means the work done by memory and perception as they act to shape Thoreau's emerging vision of a harmonious universe. Peck argues that the changing balance of memory and perception in the three works defines the unique literary character of each of them. He offers a major reevaluation of Walden, which he sees neither as the epitome of Thoreau's career (the traditional view) nor as an anomaly (the recent, revisionary view). Rather, he sees Walden as a pivotal work, reflecting the issues of loss and remembrance that earlier had found prominent expression in A Week and prefiguring the late Journal's vision of natural order. Focusing on the two-million-word Journal, Peck provides the first critical analysis that defines the essential forces and the imaginative coherence in its vast discursiveness. The consideration of memory and perception in Thoreau also leads peck to the issue of the writer's modernity, and he explores the ways in which Thoreau anticipates twentieth-century thought, especially in the works of such great objectivist philosophers as William James and Alfred North Whitehead.
Download or read book Reimagining Thoreau written by Robert Milder and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-03-31 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining Thoreau synthesizes the interests of the intellectual and psychological biographer and the literary critic in a reconsideration of Thoreau's career from his graduation from Harvard in 1837 to his death in 1862. The purposes of the book are threefold: 1) to situate Thoreau's aims and achievements as a writer within the context of his troubled relationship to m microcosm of ante-bellum Concord; 2) to reinterpret Walden as a temporally layered text in light of the successive drafts of the book and the evidence of Thoreau's journals and contemporaneous writings; and 3) toverturn traditional views of Thoreau's decline by offering a new estimate of the post-Walden writing and its place within Thoreau's development.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau written by Jack Turner and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-07-17 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writings of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) have captivated scholars, activists, and ecologists for more than a century. Less attention has been paid, however, to the author's political philosophy and its influence on American public life. Although Thoreau's doctrine of civil disobedience has long since become a touchstone of world history, the greater part of his political legacy has been overlooked. With a resurgence of interest in recent years, A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau is the first volume focused exclusively on Thoreau's ethical and political thought. Jack Turner illuminates the unexamined aspects of Thoreau's political life and writings. Combining both new and classic essays, this book offers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Thoreau's politics, and includes discussions of subjects ranging from his democratic individualism to the political relevance of his intellectual eccentricity. The collection consists of works by sixteen prominent political theorists and includes an extended bibliography on Thoreau's politics. A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau is a landmark reference for anyone seeking a better understanding of Thoreau's complex political philosophy.
