Thoreau at 200
Essays and Reassessments

This book gathers essays on central themes of Thoreau's life, work and critical reception, by both well-known and emerging scholars.

Kristen Case (Edited by), K. P. Van Anglen (Edited by)

9781107094291, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 October 2016

304 pages, 2 b/w illus.
23.9 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.57 kg

'… an authoritative array of well-informed insights that will be welcome indeed to anyone engaged in research on Thoreau or to those (why do they seem fewer these days?) who teach him on college courses …' Albert J. Von Frank, Modern Intellectual History

Henry David Thoreau's thinking about a number of ​issues - including the relationship between humans and other species, just responses to state violence, the threat posed to human freedom by industrial capitalism, and the essential relation between scientific 'facts' and poetic 'truths' - speaks to our historical moment as clearly as it did to the 'restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century' into which he was born. This volume, marking the two-hundredth anniversary of Thoreau's birth, gathers the threads of the contemporary, interdisciplinary conversation around this key figure in literary, political, philosophical, and environmental thought, uniting new essays by scholars who have shaped the field with chapters by emerging scholars investigating previously underexplored aspects of Thoreau's life, writings, and activities. Both a dispatch from the front lines of Thoreau scholarship and a vivid demonstration of Thoreau's relevance for twenty-first-century life and thought, Thoreau at 200 will be of interest for both Thoreau scholars and general readers.

Introduction Kristen Case and K. P. Van Anglen
Part I. Thoreauvian Materialism(s): 1. Thoreau's materialism and twenty-first-century environmentalism Lance Newman
2. A Free Soiler in his own broad sense: Henry David Thoreau and the Free Soil movement James S. Finley
3. Emancipation from the 'invisible hand': Thoreau's 'economy of living' Susan E. Gallagher
Part II. The Local Context: 4. Thoreau and Concord's black history Elise Lemire
5. Red Walden: Thoreau and Native America Joshua David Bellin
6. 'Beyond all men of his day': T. W. Higginson and Thoreau's legacy in postbellum America Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
7. 'The nick of time': Thoreau, New England, and America from Early Republic to Civil War Robert A. Gross
Part III. The Global Context: 8. Culture and conflict: Thoreau, Great Britain, and the Civil War Len Gougeon
9. Transnational Thoreau: time, space, and relativity Paul Giles
10. Coleridge, Thoreau, and the transatlantic 'riddle of the world' Samantha Celeste Harvey and Rochelle L. Johnson
11. Hearing animals: Thoreau between fable and elegy Wai Chee Dimock
Part IV. Thoreauvian Cosmos: 12. The value of mutual intelligence: science, poetry, and Thoreau's cosmos Laura Dassow Walls
13. Disaffiliation as engagement Lawrence Buell
14. Thoreau and Cavell: unauthorized versions Lawrence Rhu
15. Thoreau and the new American spirituality Alan D. Hodder
16. The rooster's philosophy, or the gospel according to this moment Robert D. Richardson.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature & literary studies [D]