Nature and Walking

by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overview

This literature anthology volume contains Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Henry David Thoreau's Walking. The two respective essays are the two most important essays in the environmental movement. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays & correspondence and more than 1,500 public lectures and speeches across the United States. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays & correspondence and speeches encompasses a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability of humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures and speeches first, then revised them for print. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature, Emerson puts forth the foundation of transcendentalism, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Within the essay, Emerson divides nature into four usages; Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, those four distinctions define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs. Emerson followed the success of his Nature essay with a speech called The American Scholar, which together with his previous lectures laid the foundation for transcendentalism and his literary career. Walking by Henry David Thoreau is an essay that was published posthumously in 1862. Walking is considered to be one of Henry David Thoreau's seminal works, so much so that he once wrote of the lecture, "I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I may write hereafter." While Henry David Thoreau was considered a transcendentalist, his work of writings encompasses social sciences, political science, civil rights, and humanities. Nature and Walking are both often required textbook reading and the two influential essays are conveniently combined in this one volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781537056456
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	08/23/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	84
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) (properly pronounced Thaw-roe) was an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[1] Considered one of the great lecturers of the time, Emerson had an enthusiasm and respect for his audience that enraptured crowds.

Date of Birth:

July 12, 1817

Date of Death:

May 6, 1862

Place of Birth:

Concord, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

Concord, Massachusetts

Education:

Concord Academy, 1828-33); Harvard University, 1837