Thoreauvian Modernities: Transatlantic Conversations on an American Icon [Paperback]

François Specq (Editor)
FRANÇOIS SPECQ is a professor of American literature and culture at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon-Université de Lyon/CNRS.

Laura Dassow Walls (Editor)
LAURA DASSOW WALLS is William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Michel Granger (Editor)
MICHEL GRANGER is a professor of American literature and culture at the Université de Lyon/CNRS.

Does Thoreau belong to the past or to the future? Instead of canonizing him as a celebrant of “pure” nature apart from the corruption of civilization, the essays in Thoreauvian Modernities reveal edgier facets of his work—how Thoreau is able to unsettle as well as inspire and how he is able to focus on both the timeless and the timely. Contributors from the United States and Europe explore Thoreau’s modernity and give a much-needed reassessment of his work in a global context.

The first of three sections, “Thoreau and (Non)Modernity,” views Thoreau as a social thinker who set himself against the “modern” currents of his day even while contributing to the emergence of a new era. By questioning the place of humans in the social, economic, natural, and metaphysical order, he ushered in a rethinking of humanity’s role in the natural world that nurtured the environmental movement. The second section, “Thoreau and Philosophy,” examines Thoreau’s writings in light of the philosophy of his time as well as current philosophical debates. Section three, “Thoreau, Language, and the Wild,” centers on his relationship to wild nature in its philosophical, scientific, linguistic, and literary dimensions. Together, these sixteen lÃ9