Thoreau beyond Borders: New International Essays on America's Most Famous Nature Writer - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1625345569 ISBN 13: 9781625345561

Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020

Synopsis

Henry David Thoreau spent his life as an intellectual vagrant, jumping fences, pushing boundaries, and crossing borders. How, why, and to what end are the questions asked by contributors to this new volume of essays, whose work crosses national and disciplinary borders to think about Thoreau anew.

Deliberately invoking Thoreau's commitment to “living a border life,” a life located between the world of nature and that of the polis, these varied essays explore the writer's thinking and writing as situated not merely against, but across and beyond borders and boundaries―whether geographic, temporal, or spiritual. Arguing that literary texts are governed by mediation and dialogue, lines of force becoming lines of connection that entail complex patterns and interweavings, the contributors draw on methodologies that freely combine literary and philosophical approaches with cultural and political ones―in turn moving us beyond borders.

Contributors include the volume editors as well as Kristen Case, Danielle Follett, Rochelle Johnson, John J. Kucich, Daniel S. Malachuk, Henrik Otterberg, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Benjamin Pickford, David M. Robinson, Christa Holm Vogelius, and Michael C. Weisenburg.

About this title

About the Author

FRANÇOIS SPECQ is professor of American literature and culture at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France. LAURA DASSOW WALLS is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. JULIEN NÈGRE is associate professor of American literature and culture at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1625345569
• ISBN 13: 9781625345561
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Specq François, Walls Laura Dassow, Nègre Julien