We must look a long time before we can see : the art and science of Thoreau's early works

Abstract

By the mid-nineteenth century, American Romanticism had replaced the predominant idea of nature as an exploitable resource with a different vision of nature -- one steeped in beauty and reverence. Perhaps no writer has done more for the growing field of environmental literature than Henry David Thoreau, whose seamless synthesis of science and art illustrates his own version of sight, one that relies on two distinct ways of seeing --the embodied, or literal, and the disembodied, or philosophical. While much has been written about transcendental notions of sight and seeing, relatively little scholarship exists on Thoreau's early writing in general. By the end of his life, Thoreau's interest in nature has shifted from a predominately transcendental and philosophical one to a more scientific one, and his work as a naturalist heavily influenced this shift. Thoreau's desire for integration of these two different perspectives is evident in his early texts, where he is still finding his footing as a writer. It is imperative to understand the ways in which Thoreau considered sight as essential to understanding the distinctions of art and science in the natural world. His early texts exhibit a young Thoreau teetering between establishing himself as a poet and learning as a fledgling scientist, and of the ways in which he navigates the space between art and science generally, as well as his own art and science -- his poetry and observations. Thoreau's writing is influenced by the ways in which he perceived science and art in nature at different stages of his career, and my dissertation is looking at the intersection of these two aspects of his life as a young writer.