Thoreau's Sense of Place

Recent Thoreau studies have shifted to an emphasis on the "green" Thoreau, on Thoreau the environmentalist, rooted firmly in particular places and interacting with particular objects. In the wake of Buell's Environmental Imagination, the nineteen essayists in this challenging volume address the central questions in Thoreau studies today: how "green," how immersed in a sense of ...

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Recent Thoreau studies have shifted to an emphasis on the "green" Thoreau, on Thoreau the environmentalist, rooted firmly in particular places and interacting with particular objects. In the wake of Buell's Environmental Imagination, the nineteen essayists in this challenging volume address the central questions in Thoreau studies today: how "green," how immersed in a sense of place, was Thoreau really, and how has this sense of place affected the tradition of nature writing in America?

The contributors to this stimulating collection address the ways in which Thoreau and his successors attempt to cope with the basic epistemological split between perceiver and place inherent in writing about nature; related discussions involve the kinds of discourse most effective for writing about place. They focus on the impact on Thoreau and his successors of culturally constructed assumptions deriving from science, politics, race, gender, history, and literary conventions. Finally, they explore the implications surrounding a writer's appropriation or even exploitation of places and objects.

Review

"This is a book at once diverse and thoughtfully coordinated from which, to my pleasure and humility, I've learned much about things I supposed I had already understood." -- from the foreword by Lawrence Buell

amazon Top Reviews

Robert L. France

4.0 out of 5 stars

putting Thoreau back in his place!

September 4, 2004

This is an extremely interesting and useful collection of papers by leading Thoreauvian scholars. By focusing upon the landscape (both physical and intellectual) we finally have a good idea of how Thoreau was influenced by the world around him. I made ample use of this important work when writing my own book Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagement With Water (Green Frigate Books, 2003).

From Library Journal

This unique, scholarly collection of essays painstakingly examines the writing of Thoreau, comparing him with other environmental writers and stressing literary scholarship within environmental studies. In this lofty collection of essays edited by Schneider (English, Wartburg Coll.), critics and followers of Thoreau break apart his writing to investigate, w...

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From Library Journal

This unique, scholarly collection of essays painstakingly examines the writing of Thoreau, comparing him with other environmental writers and stressing literary scholarship within environmental studies. In this lofty collection of essays edited by Schneider (English, Wartburg Coll.), critics and followers of Thoreau break apart his writing to investigate, word by word, the biocentric and anthropocentric nature of his works. The collection emphasizes four distinct themes on place: relating, imagining, socially constructing, and saving. It compares Thoreau!s writing to that of such other authors as Annie Dillard and Edward Abbey. Fascinating discourses compare the poetry of Wendell Berry as well as the paintings of the first generation of the Hudson River School of landscape painters. Recommended for academic libraries."Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board Lib., Pinellas Park, FL

Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword ix
Lawrence Buell
Introduction 1
i . relating to place: “between me and it”
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contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword ix
Lawrence Buell
Introduction 1
i . relating to place: “between me and it”
Believing in Nature: Wilderness and Wildness in Thoreauvian Science 15
Laura Dassow Walls
Thoreau’s Transcendental Ecocentrism 28
William Rossi
‘‘Climate Does Thus React on Man’’: Wildness and Geographic Determinism in Thoreau’s ‘‘Walking’’ 44
Richard J. Schneider
‘‘In Search of a More Human Nature’’: Wendell Berry’s Revision of Thoreau’s Experiment 61
Ted Olson
Water-Signs: Place and Metaphor in Dillard and Thoreau 70
James A. Papa, Jr.
i i . imaging place: finding a discourse to match discovery
The Written World: Place and History in Thoreau’s ‘‘A Walk to Wachusett’’ 83
David M. Robinson
Thoreau, Thomas Cole, and Asher Durand: Composing the American Landscape 93
Isaiah Smithson
Reading Home: Thoreau, Literature, and the Phenomenon of Inhabitation 115
Peter Blakemore
Seeing the West Side of Any Mountain: Thoreau and Contemporary Ecological Poetry 133
J. Scott Bryson
i i i . socially constructing place: culture and nature
TenWays of Seeing Landscapes in Walden and Beyond 149
James G. McGrath
Sauntering in the IndustrialWilderness 165
Bernard W. Quetchenbach
Walden, Rural Hours, and the Dilemma of Representation 179
Rochelle Johnson
Wordsworth and Thoreau: Two Versions of Pastoral 194
Greg Garrard
Humanity as ‘‘A Part and Parcel of Nature’’: A Comparative Study of Thoreau’s and Taoist Concepts of Nature 207
Aimin Cheng
iv. saving place: writing as appropriation or preservation of nature
Speaking for Nature: Thoreau and the ‘‘Problem’’ of ‘‘Nature Writing’’ 223
Nancy Craig Simmons
Depopulation, Deforestation, and the Actual Walden Pond 235
Robert Sattelmeyer
Skirting Lowell:The Exceptional Work of Nature in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers 244
Stephen Germic
Rustling Thoreau’s Cattle:Wildness and Domesticity in ‘‘Walking’’ 254
Barbara ‘‘Barney’’ Nelson
Counter Frictions: Writing and Activism in the Work of Abbey and Thoreau 266
Susan M. Lucas
Contributors 281
Works Cited 285
Index 301
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