![]() ![]() To investigate this friendship and Walden’s accommodations of faux friendship, I construct a Burkean perspective by incongruity using research in the nature-writing and rhetoric disciplines that intersect with Thoreauvian studies. Walden’s friendship with its reader is the agency that accomplishes what Henry Golemba and Lawrence Buell have noted as a blurring of the boundary between reader and text. Walden delivers on Thoreau’s theory of friendship from his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. I combine a close reading of Walden with selective study of the text’s reception. Thoreau had already been experimenting with what Branka Arsić identified as “literalization.” Nevertheless, a period of crisis, detailed by Robert Milder, made him aware of what Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok have referred to as the melancholic’s blind skill of “demetaphorization.” I suggest that Thoreau exploited this skill to produce Walden’s unique ability to feed on and, as Henry Abelove and Henry Golemba have suggested, awaken its reader’s desires. This project begins with a situational analysis that identifies the melancholic antecedents of Walden in Thoreau’s life and his choices that led to the illumination of his melancholia. While many have investigated Thoreau’s queerness, there has been little notice of Walden’s queerness. Digital Thoreau as a whole is a multi-faceted web resource that offers interesting new opportunities for scholarly research as well as for teaching and public engagement with Thoreau’s influential works. The third project is a student created digital archive of the papers of Thoreau scholar Walter Harding, which is primarily a pedagogical exercise in digital humanities for the students of SUNY Geneseo. In the second project a very innovative and engaging social reading platform has been created in order to facilitate community and student driven annotation of both Walden and his 1849 essay Resistance to Civil Government. This allows multiple versions of the text to be represented simultaneously in a dynamic environment, which can be a valuable resource to Thoreau scholars, particularly for those interested in researching the genetic aspect of the text. The first of these is a fluid text edition of Thoreau’s most famous work Walden. “Cramer’s side notes are like short, illuminating conversations.Digital Thoreau is a web resource comprising three digital projects related to the work of Henry David Thoreau created at SUNY Geneseo. Cramer, is the edition to choose."-Allan D. “For those who aspire to a deeper understanding of the man and his milieu, the annotated Walden, edited by Jeffrey S. “By far the best edition currently available of that weirdly central work of American literature, and somewhat surprisingly the prettiest as well.”-Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly It is the paradox of Walden, and of all great literature that seeks to represent the real world, that by rooting his narrative so firmly in actualities of his own time and place, Thoreau created a work that remains vitally relevant to our own.”-Robert Finch, Los Angeles Times “Meticulous and often fascinating annotations. Cramer’s version now replaces all other available editions of Walden as the most attractive and reliable way to approach this great American book.”-Joel Porte, author of Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed ![]() “Jeffrey Cramer’s Walden is the most accurate and readable text of Thoreau’s masterpiece. His edition of Walden will be a boon to ordinary readers and scholars alike.-Denis Donoghue, author of Speaking of Beauty Hodder, professor of comparative religion, Hampshire College Now, more than ever, Walden is our indispensable American book.” -Alan D. Cramer-speaks to our material and spiritual condition as powerfully as on the day it first appeared. “Thoreau’s masterpiece-here freshly refurbished by Jeffrey S. “A handsome ‘all-things-Walden’ edition.”- Michael Kenney, Boston Sunday Globe ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |