Henry David Thoreau (Bloom's Classic Critical Views)

208 Pages·2009·1.255 MB·English

by  Harold Bloom

Bloom’s Classic Critical Views
henry david thoreau
Bloom’s Classic Critical Views
Benjamin Franklin
the Brontës
Charles dickens
edgar allan Poe
Geoffrey Chaucer
henry david thoreau
herman Melville
Jane austen
John donne and the Metaphysical Poets
Mark twain
Mary Shelley
nathaniel hawthorne
oscar Wilde
ralph Waldo emerson
Walt Whitman
William Blake
Bloom’s Classic Critical Views
henry david thoreau
Edited and with an Introduction by
harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the humanities
yale university
Bloom’s Classic Critical Views: Henry David Thoreau
Copyright © 2008 infobase Publishing
introduction © 2008 by harold Bloom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
henry david thoreau / edited and with an introduction by harold Bloom.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s classic critical views)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-1-60413-141-3 (hardcover)
1. thoreau, henry david, 1817–1862—Criticism and interpretation. i. Bloom, harold.
ii. title. iii. Series.
PS3054.h38 2008
818’.309—dc22
2008022014
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Contents
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Series Introduction vii
Introduction by Harold Bloom ix
Biography xiii
Personal 3
nathaniel hawthorne (1842) 8
Louisa May alcott “Thoreau’s Flute” (1863) 8
ralph Waldo emerson “Thoreau” (1862) 10
Moncure daniel Conway (1866) 26
robert Louis Stevenson “henry david Thoreau: his Character
and opinions” (1880) & “Preface, by Way of Criticism”
(1886) 28
rose hawthorne Lathrop (1897) 51
Bradford torrey “Thoreau’s attitude toward nature” (1899) 52
Frederick M. Smith “Thoreau” (1900) 59
edward emerson “henry Thoreau as remembered by a
young Friend” (1917) 68
General 109
Thomas Carlyle (1847) 113
James russell Lowell “Thoreau” (1856) 114
a. Bronson alcott “Thoreau” (1869) 122
William ellery Channing (1873) 126
alexander hay Japp (1878) 131
Thomas Wentworth higginson “Thoreau” (1879) 134
henry James (1880) 136
F.B. Sanborn (1882) 137
vi Contents
alfred h. Welsh (1883) 139
edwin P. Whipple “american Literature” (1886) 140
Charles F. richardson (1887) 141
havelock ellis “Whitman” (1890) 141
henry S. Salt (1890) 144
P. anderson Graham “The Philosophy of idleness” (1891) 149
Brander Matthews (1896) 150
Thomas Wentworth higginson “henry david Thoreau” (1898) 150
donald G. Mitchell (1899) 151
Walter C. Bronson (1900) 152
Barrett Wendell (1900) 152
Paul elmer More “a hermit’s notes on Thoreau” (1901) 156
WorkS 169
Walden 173
andrew Preston Peabody (1854) 173
George William Curtis (1862) 173
William dean howells “My First visit to new england” (1894) 173
Theodore F. Wolfe “The Concord Pilgrimage” (1895) 174
Fred Lewis Pattee (1896) 174
Fannie hardy eckstorm “Thoreau’s ‘Maine Woods’” (1908) 175
Chronology 183
index 185
Series Introduction
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Bloom’s Classic Critical Views is a new series presenting a selection of the most
important older literary criticism on the greatest authors commonly read in high
school and college classes today. Unlike the Bloom’s Modern Critical Views series,
which for more than 20 years has provided the best contemporary criticism on great
authors, Bloom’s Classic Critical Views attempts to present the authors in the con-
text of their time and to provide criticism that has proved over the years to be the
most valuable to readers and writers. Selections range from contemporary reviews
in popular magazines, which demonstrate how a work was received in its own era,
to profound essays by some of the strongest critics in the British and American tradi-
tion, including Henry James, G.K. Chesterton, Matthew Arnold, and many more.
Some of the critical essays and extracts presented here have appeared previously
in other titles edited by Harold Bloom, such as the New Moulton’s Library of Literary
Criticism. Other selections appear here for the first time in any book by this publisher.
All were selected under Harold Bloom’s guidance.
In addition, each volume in this series contains a series of essays by a contemporary
expert, who comments on the most important critical selections, putting them in
context and suggesting how they might be used by a student writer to influence his
or her own writing. This series is intended above all for students, to help them think
more deeply and write more powerfully about great writers and their works.
vii

Introduction by Harold Bloom
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i have been so ardent an emersonian since 1965 that only belatedly have
i come now to a fuller appreciation of Thoreau. ruggedly his own person,
Thoreau nevertheless began as emerson’s disciple, even as Walt Whitman did.
Walden remains a very emersonian book, and so does Leaves of Grass (1855),
and both works are american masterpieces. The influence of emerson
was and is liberating, perhaps because the Concord sage legislates against
influence.
Thoreau arrived late at canonical status, as did Whitman, whom Thoreau
visited and greatly admired. now, in the twenty-first century, it seems almost
odd that Thoreau, Whitman, and herman Melville were accepted only in the
earlier twentieth century as luminaries of the american renaissance, joining
emerson and hawthorne in the pantheon of classic american imaginative
literature.
The importance of Thoreau is multiform, and i want here to center
only on his foundational status as the vitalizing precursor of contemporary
american ecological writing. you can argue that, historically considered, the
Thoreau of “Civil disobedience” must take precedence over the Thoreau of
saving-the-earth since both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. took their
starting point from the Concord woodsman who chose jail in preference
to paying poll tax to a society that refused to abolish black slavery and that
waged imperialistic war against Mexico. yet the long-range effect of Thoreau
as ecological prophet is likely to be even greater.
My reflections are moved by a remarkable new Library of america
anthology, Bill McKibben’s American Earth: Environmental Writing Since
Thoreau. after selections from Thoreau, we are given a thousand pages of
those in his wake, including John Muir, Theodore roosevelt, John Burroughs,
ix