Excursions with Thoreau: Philosophy, Poetry, Religion

ISBN-13: 9781501305641 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 296 str.

Professor Edward F. Mooney

Opis

Excursions with Thoreau is a major new exploration of Thoreau's writing and thought that is philosophical yet sensitive to the literary and religious. Edward F. Mooney's excursions through passages from Walden, Cape Cod, and his late essay "Walking" reveal Thoreau as a miraculous writer, artist, and religious adept. Of course Thoreau remains the familiar political activist and environmental philosopher, but in these fifteen excursions we discover new terrain. Among the notable themes that emerge are Thoreau's grappling with underlying affliction; his pursuit of wonder as ameliorating affliction; his use of the enigmatic image of "a child of the mist"; his exalting "sympathy with intelligence" over plain knowledge; and his preferring "befitting reverie"-not argument-as the way to be carried to better, cleaner perceptions of reality. Mooney's aim is bring alive Thoreau's moments of reverie and insight, and to frame his philosophy as poetic and episodic rather than discursive and systematic.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments Preface 1. Overture 2. Celebration and Lamentation 3. Sympathy with Intelligence 4. Concord Reflections 5. Transforming Perception 6. Ethics and the Wild 7. Expressive Bones 8. Child of the Mist 9. Deaths and Rebirths 10. Affliction and Affinity 11. John Brown 12. Souls in Infinite Culture 13. Currents of Time 14. Grounding Poetry 15. Face of the River Closing Thoughts Closing Images, Reveries, Prayers Closing Passions Chronology, Works Cited, Credits Index