Thoreau's late career and The dispersion of seeds : the saunterer's synoptic vision

Bibliographic Information

Thoreau's late career and The dispersion of seeds : the saunterer's synoptic vision

Michael Benjamin Berger

(Studies in English and American literature, linguistics, and culture)

Camden House, 2000

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Description and Table of Contents

Description

The first detailed study of a major but neglected work by Thoreau. Until very recently, only a handful of Thoreau specialists knew of the existence of 'The Dispersion of Seeds', an ecological treatise written during the last years of Thoreau's life, which has been reconstructed and edited, and was published for the first time in 1993. Thoreau's Late Career and the Dispersion of Seeds, the first full-length study of this important late work by Thoreau, analyzes literary features of 'The Dispersion of Seeds' that make it an accomplished work of the imagination, and applies interdisciplinary scholarship in order to relate Thoreau's prescient ecology to scientific issues of his day and ours. Thus it demonstrates that in his late career Thoreauwas working as scientist and poet simultaneously. Berger further explores how Thoreau managed the philosophical and rhetorical tensions involved in bridging the supposed gap between science and poetry, and how, in his later career, he embraced the empirical method of scientific discovery while challenging the reductive assumptions of scientific materialism. In these specific ways Berger's study advances new understandings of Thoreau's purposes and accomplishments during his post-Walden career. Michael Berger, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Communications at The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences in Cincinnati. He is on the Board of Directors ofThe Thoreau Society.

Table of Contents

From Walden Pond to Main Street The Saunterer's Vision: Thoreau's Epiphany of Forest Dynamics in The Dispersion of Seeds Seed Dispersal Ecology: Thoreau's Science in The Dispersion of Seeds The Sign of the Scarlet Oak Leaf: Thoreau's Epistemological Meditations in the Late Writings Appendices Works Cited Index

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