English 313 Study in a Major Author:
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
WHO WAS THIS GUY?
REBEL? TREE-HUGGER? REVOLUTIONARY? FREAK?
This course is an in-depth examination of Henry David Thoreau as a writer, naturalist, activist, and Transcendentalist. To understand his creative process, we’ll read Walden closely along with the journal notes Thoreau wrote at Walden. Cape Cod and The Maine Woods will show us his development as a naturalist writer. “Civil Disobedience” inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but Thoreau’s politics led him in unexpected directions. In “A Plea for John Brown”and “Slavery in Massachusetts,” he develops political/moral philosophies based on individual action. We’ll also consider Thoreau in relation to Transcendentalism, America’s first home-grown intellectual movement. “Trust thyself – every heart vibrates to that iron string,” Emerson wrote. Yet what WASTranscendentalism? How did these people actually live it? To give us a full view, our materials will range from Thoreau’s extended works to his essays, journal excerpts, and biographical information. There will be supplementary materials from his Transcendentalist contemporaries, such as Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, the Peabody sisters, and radical abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. Finally, we’ll take our measure of Thoreau’s legacy, from contemporary environmentalism to the current state of Walden Pond itself. By the end of the course, students will have achieved a very thorough grasp of this major figure in both literature and American intellectual history.