"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.
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A short but capacious text, the judicious, timely product of decades of thinking about ecocriticism. * John Kerrigan, Times Literary Supplement * "An indispensible tool and truly impressive achievement" * Cristin Ellis, New England Quarterly * Lawrence Buell's Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently is the essential guide to the essential Thoreau. Distilling a career's worth of study and thought, Buell deftly situates Thoreau, the 'confessed misfit,' at the center of 'the Transcendentalist centrifuge,' and proceeds to reveal how, in one too-short lifetime, this man of many gifts succeeded in leaving behind for us treasures of his own: a hybrid style of creative writing, a biocentric conception of life on our planet, a road map for political action, and perhaps the greatest of all, his 'vision of human infinitude.' * Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, The Peabody Sisters, and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast * A scintillating distillation of Buell's career-long engagement with Thoreau's life and times, this volume stands as the best introduction to this iconic figure in American culture. Buell captures the essence of Thoreau's compelling personality as he details his remarkably varied contributions to antebellum intellectual life. This book is yet another gem in Buell's scholarly diadem. * Philip F. Gura, William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Mr. Buell's book powerfully motivates us to treat Thoreau 'not as an oracle but as a stimulus to see and be beyond the ordinary.' * Christopher Irmscher, The Wall Street Journal * The best brief introduction to Thoreau we now have... His book is a schoolroom. Enroll in this class. * Todd Shy, Los Angeles Review of Books * Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently by Lawrence Buell, meanwhile, seeks to make some broader sense of the complex figure behind the work. * Costica Bradatan, TLS * Thinking Disobediently by Lawrence Buella|seeks to make some broader sense of the complex figure behind the work... For all the disconcerting variety, Buell finds a sense of unity and harmony in Thoreau. * Times Literary Supplement * A distinguished scholar of New England's men of letters, Buell tackles several aspects of Thoreau's brief life and contexts...Highly recommended. Lower division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice * A helpful primer on the historical Thoreau's thought... succeeds at defamiliarizing Thoreau, leaving us better equipped to grasp the complexity of his project. * Ashley C. Barnes, Commonweal *
Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson.
Autor*in
Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature EmeritusPowell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University
1. Life and Mythmaking
2. Essential Thoreau
3. Contexts: Antebellum America, Transcendentalism, Emerson
4. The Writer
5. The Turn to Science
6. The Political Thoreau
7. Matters of Faith
Acknowledgments
Notes
Further Reading
