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Henry David Thoreau’s Environmental Humanism

Year 2009, Issue: 30, 31 - 42, 01.10.2009

Abstract

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic and wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander

References

  • Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995.
  • Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Eds. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Norton, 2001.
  • Humboldt, Alexander von. Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Trans. Elise C. Otté. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1850.
  • Slovic, Scott. Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing. Salt Lake City, UT: U of Utah P, 1992.
  • Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Ed. J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971.
  • Walls, Laura Dassow. The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 2009.
Year 2009, Issue: 30, 31 - 42, 01.10.2009

Abstract

References

  • Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995.
  • Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Eds. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Norton, 2001.
  • Humboldt, Alexander von. Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Trans. Elise C. Otté. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1850.
  • Slovic, Scott. Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing. Salt Lake City, UT: U of Utah P, 1992.
  • Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Ed. J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971.
  • Walls, Laura Dassow. The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 2009.
There are 6 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

François Specq This is me

Publication Date October 1, 2009
Published in Issue Year 2009 Issue: 30

Cite

MLA Specq, François. “Henry David Thoreau’s Environmental Humanism”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 30, 2009, pp. 31-42.

JAST - Journal of American Studies of Turkey