Thoreaus Sense of Place: Essays in American Environmental Writing (American Land & Life)

✍ Scribed by Richard J. Schneider (editor)

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 325
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

acknowledgments
foreword by Lawrence Buell
introduction
Believing in Nature Wilderness and Wildness in Thoreauvian Science laura dassow wa l l s
Thoreau’s Transcendental Ecocentrism william r o s s i
‘‘Climate Does Thus React on Man’’ Wildness and Geographic Determinism in Thoreau’s ‘‘Walking’’ richard j . schneider
‘‘In Search of a More Human Nature’’ Wendell Berry’s Revision of Thoreau’s Experiment ted olson
Water-Signs Place and Metaphor in Dillard and Thoreau james a . papa, j r .
The WrittenWorld Place and History in Thoreau’s ‘‘A Walk to Wachusett’’ david m . robinson
Thoreau, Thomas Cole, and Asher Durand Composing the American Landscape i s a i a h smithson
Reading Home Thoreau, Literature, and the Phenomenon of Inhabitation peter blakemore
Seeing the West Side of Any Mountain Thoreau and Contemporary Ecological Poetry j . scott bryson
TenWays of Seeing Landscapes in "Walden" and Beyond james g . mcgrath
Sauntering in the IndustrialWilderness bernard w. quetchenbach
"Walden," "Rural Hours," and the Dilemma of Representation rochelle johnson
Wordsworth and Thoreau Two Versions of Pastoral greg garrard
Humanity as ‘‘A Part and Parcel of Nature’’ A Comparative Study of Thoreau’s and Taoist Concepts of Nature aimin cheng
Speaking for Nature Thoreau and the ‘‘Problem’’ of ‘‘Nature Writing’’ nancy craig simmons
Depopulation, Deforestation, and the ActualWalden Pond robert sattelmeyer
Skirting Lowell The ExceptionalWork of Nature inAWeek on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers stephen germic
Rustling Thoreau’s Cattle Wildness and Domesticity in ‘‘Walking’’ barbara “barney” nelson
Counter Frictions Writing and Activism in the Work of Abbey and Thoreau susan m . lucas
contributors
works cited
index