Barnes & Noble Classics Walden and Civil Disobedience ISBN 9781593081997pdf/txt下载_在线阅读全文

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　　New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars
　　Biographies of the authors
　　Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, andcultural events
　　Footnotes and endnotes
　　Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books,plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the workComments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge thereader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for furtherreading Indices Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellation ofinfluences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich eachreader's understanding of these enduring works.

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and
scholars 
　　Biographies of the authors 
　　Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and
cultural events 
　　Footnotes and endnotes 
　　Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books,
plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the
reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further
reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate 
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior
specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.
Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of
influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each
reader's understanding of these enduring works. 
　　Henry David Thoreau was a sturdy individualist and a lover of
nature. In March, 1845, he built himself a wooden hut on the edge
of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived until
September 1847. Walden is Thoreaus autobiograophical account of his
Robinson Crusoe existence, bare of creature comforts but rich in
contemplation of the wonders of nature and the ways of man. On The
Duty Of Civil Disobedience is the classic protest against
government's interference with individual liberty, and is
considered one of the most famous essays ever written. This newly
repackaged edition also includes a selection of Thoreau's
poetry. 
　　Jonathan Levin is Dean of the School of Humanities and Professor
of Literature and Culture at SUNY-Purchase. His research interests
include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and
culture, modernism and modernity, and environmental studies. He is
the author of The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, and
American Literary Modernism, as well as numerous essays and
reviews.

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目　　录

The World of Henry David Thoreau,

Walden and "Civil Disobedience"
Introduction by Jonathan Levin
WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Inspired by Walden
Comments & Questions
For Further Reading

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　　In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a smallcabin he'd built near the shore of Walden Pond, about a mile and ahalf south of his native village of Concord, Massachusetts.Although Thoreau's experience over the next two years, two months,and two days could hardly be considered a wilderness adventure, itdid nevertheless constitute a significant departure from the norm.Most of his neighbors, at least, thought he was a little bit crazy.As Thoreau suggests in the early chapters of Walden, he set out toconduct an experiment: Could he survive, possibly even thrive, bystripping away all superfluous luxuries, living a plain, simplelife in radically reduced conditions? Besides building his ownshelter and providing the fuel to heat it (that is, chopping hisown firewood), he would grow and catch his own food, even providehis own entertainment. It was, as he delighted to point out, anexperiment in basic home economics; but in truth, his aim was toinvestigate the larger moral and spiritual economy of such a life.If, as he notes in the book's first chapter, the "mass of men leadlives of quiet desperation," perhaps by leaving it all behind andstarting over on the relatively isolated shores of Walden Pond hecould restore some of life's seemingly diminished vigor.

In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small
cabin he'd built near the shore of Walden Pond, about a mile and a
half south of his native village of Concord, Massachusetts.
Although Thoreau's experience over the next two years, two months,
and two days could hardly be considered a wilderness adventure, it
did nevertheless constitute a significant departure from the norm.
Most of his neighbors, at least, thought he was a little bit crazy.
As Thoreau suggests in the early chapters of Walden, he set out to
conduct an experiment: Could he survive, possibly even thrive, by
stripping away all superfluous luxuries, living a plain, simple
life in radically reduced conditions? Besides building his own
shelter and providing the fuel to heat it (that is, chopping his
own firewood), he would grow and catch his own food, even provide
his own entertainment. It was, as he delighted to point out, an
experiment in basic home economics; but in truth, his aim was to
investigate the larger moral and spiritual economy of such a life.
If, as he notes in the book's first chapter, the "mass of men lead
lives of quiet desperation," perhaps by leaving it all behind and
starting over on the relatively isolated shores of Walden Pond he
could restore some of life's seemingly diminished vigor. 
　　Indeed, there is plenty of undiminished vigor on display in these
pages. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his journal described Henry as "a
young man with much of wild original nature still remaining in him"
(Hawthorne, The Heart of Hawthorne's Journals, p. 105; see "For
Further Reading"), and readers have often since regarded him—along
with Walt Whitman—as something like the wild man of
nineteenth-century American literature. Few readers ever forget the
start of Walden's "Higher Laws" chapter: "As I came home through
the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now
quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my
path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly
tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then,
except for that wildness which he represented". In many respects,
Thoreau went to Walden in search of the raw, hoping that an
infusion of "savage delight" would cure him and (by the example he
would provide) his neighbors of what he regarded as
over-civilization, which he linked to timidity and uncritical faith
in the authority of others. Throughout Walden, and indeed
throughout the greater part of his writing, the impulse to simplify
conditions and cast off the debilitating and dispiriting
obligations of a respectable life is bound up with this pursuit of
uninhibited, unadulterated wildness. His admiration for wildness in
nature was unbounded. "Life consists with wildness," he comments in
the popular talk now known to readers as "Walking." "The most alive
is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him"
(Thoreau, Collected Essays and Poems, p. 240). "Hope and the future
for me," he adds, "are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in
towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps" (p.
241). 
　　Of course, Thoreau was hardly an actual wild man, a point he
acknowledges in another talk, "Wild Apples," when he notes that
"our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not
to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from
the cultivated stock" (Thoreau, p. 452). As this comment suggests,
Thoreau recognized that he came to the woods as a highly developed
product of civilized society. So too his approach to the Walden
environs should be regarded not as a kind of wilderness
adventure—Walden was hardly a wilderness, then as now—but rather as
an effort to locate and give voice to the wildness that subsists
with and within the cultivated and domesticated. Late in Walden,
offering an analogy from nature for the kind of extravagance he
emulates in his writing, he notes that the migrating buffalo
seeking "new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like
the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and
runs after her calf, in milking time". It is telling, in ways that
few readers have fully understood, that Thoreau should actually
prefer this cow to the seemingly wilder buffalo. What appeals to
him about the cow is that its wild instinct has survived
domestication: The wildness Thoreau pursues is not found in
complete isolation from civilized and domesticating influences but
rather survives in a deep, if sometimes unacknowledged, layer of
being underlying those influences. The experiment at Walden Pond
was an attempt to recover such wildness, as it survived on the
margins of Concord village life and beneath the smooth and refined
surface of even the most modern, educated, and enlightened men and
women.

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