Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 439-457).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-260) and index.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Louisville, 2004. / Department of Theatre Arts. Vita. "May 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaf 40).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept of English, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-73).

Predominantly darker than his other works, Cape Cod depicts Henry David Thoreau's interpretation of life as a struggle for survival and a search for salvation in a stark New England setting. Representing Thoreau's greatest test of the goodness of God and nature, the book illustrates the centrality of the subject of death to Thoreau's philosophy of life. Contending that Thoreau's journey to the Cape originated from an intensely personal transcendental impulse connected with his brother's death, this study provides the first in-depth examination of Thoreau's use of the five senses in Cape Cod to reveal both the eccentricities inherent in his relationship with nature and his method of resolving his fears of mortality. Some of the sense impressions in Cape Cod--particularly those that center around human death and those that involve tactile sensations--suggest that Thoreau sometimes tried to master his fears by subconsciously altering painful historical facts or by avoiding the type of sensual contact that aggravated the repressed guilt he suffered from his brother's death. Despite his personal idiosyncrasies, however, Thoreau persisted in his search for truth, and the written record of his journey in Cape Cod documents how his dedication to the transcendental process enabled him to surmount his inner turmoil and reconfirm his intuitive faith. In following this process to spiritual renewal, Thoreau begins with subjective impressions of nature and advances to knowledge of objective realities before ultimately reaching symbolic and universal truth. By analyzing nature's lessons as they evolve from Thoreau's use of his senses, this dissertation shows that Cape Cod, rather than invalidating Thoreau's faith, actually expands his transcendental perspective and so rightfully stands beside Walden as one of the fundamental cornerstones of his canon. In addition, the study proffers new support for previous psychoanalytical interpretations of Thoreau and his writings, reveals heretofore unrecognized historical inaccuracies in his account of the shipwreck that frames the book's opening, and provides the first detailed consideration of the linguistic implications of Cape Cod.

This dissertation examines how Concord, Massachusetts became a heritage town in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Concord-based authors (including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott) at once contributed to Concord’s attractiveness as a location and took advantage of the growing reputation and popularity of the town as a tourist site. Their writings, rooted in Concord, drew attention to the town and to themselves as authors within it, while also elevating the stature of American literature. Linking literature and site-building, Concordians encouraged contemporaneous sightseeing in a curated landscape. This sets the origins of tourism and site-building in Concord earlier than standard academic narratives of Progressive Era preservation in New England. The primary contribution of this interdisciplinary study is to trace the ways in which collective memory was fashioned for an audience of literary “arm-chair travellers” and then employed to endow private houses with literary and historical importance to national heritage, as public locations to be visited and preserved in Concord’s landscape. This work traces the development of spiritualized “places” in Concord from Revolutionary War monument-building to Emerson’s literary community investing the landscape with poetic associations, Hawthorne’s engagement of tourism as an appeal to readers, and George William Curtis’s efforts to market Concord as a national literary retreat. It further examines Thoreau’s literary career in relation to his interest in local history, tourism, and museum-building in his hometown. Finally, the popularity of Alcott’s Little Women boosted tourism in Concord, and the increase of visitors coincided with projects to memorialize Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Transcendentalist movement in the landscape. These efforts culminated in the development of guide books and organized tours for visitors, and the emergence of a local souvenir industry. The study concludes with the institutionalization of historic house museums in the early twentieth century.

No description available.

The recent "greening" of Willa Cather Scholarship has initiated new conversations about Cather's use of and dependence on landscape in her fiction. Scholars have frequently noted Cather's reliance on landscape imagery, but this thesis suggests parallels between Cather's and Henry David Thoreau's use of awakening imagery and examines how such parallels work in Cather's environmental discussion of wilderness and environmental communities. There is little direct evidence linking the development of Cather to Thoreau, although their similar use of awakening imagery suggests they comment on similar environmental discussions through their writing, indicating that Cather deserves further attention as a nature writer. Because Thoreau is often identified as the father of modern nature writing, recognizing similarities between Cather and Thoreau further solidifies Cather's place within the canon of American nature writing. This thesis examines how Cather's awakening imagery in The Song of the Lark is similar to Thoreau's ideas of awakening in Walden. The comparison elucidates Cather's dependence on landscape that evolves into a deeper ecological discussion in My Ántonia where Cather's characters wrestle with finding a balance between modern industry and land preservation, an issue Thoreau also battled in his time. Preservation becomes an important element in Cather's fiction and is explored in this thesis through concepts of wilderness. Finally, I will address how Death Comes for the Archbishop uses awakening imagery and concepts of wilderness to promote the creation of balanced environmental communities. Cather's ability to employ elements of nature writing in Archbishop makes it her strongest holistic showing as a nature writer. Reading Cather as a nature writer who recognized similar environmental issues as Thoreau forces critics to broaden the canon of American nature writing. Such a reading also expands previous ideas of the form and style of traditional nature writing. Recognizing Cather's dependence on landscape gives nature a voice among other social issues Cather addresses in her writing, namely gender, race, and social status. Identifying Cather as an American nature writer issues a greater call to critics and scholars to re-evaluate other texts within and without of the canon for their ecological significance. Focusing on consistent ecological issues and patterns in American literature will broaden our understanding of the nation's evolving ecological imagination.

A study of Henry David Thoreau's opinions on religion, economics, politics, government, and major political issues of his time.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s collection of short stories, Mosses from an Old Manse, serves as his contribution to the philosophical discussions on Transcendentalism in Concord, MA in the early 1840s. While Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the other individuals involved in the Transcendental club often seem to readily accept the positions presented in Emerson’s work, it is never so simple for Hawthorne. Repeatedly, Hawthorne’s stories demonstrate his difficulty in trying to identify his own opinion on the subject. Though Hawthorne seems to want to believe in the optimistic potential of the spiritual and intellectual ideal presented in Emersonian Transcendentalism, he consistently dwells on the evil and blackness that may be contained in the human heart. The collection of short stories written while Hawthorne lived in Concord and surrounded himself with those dominant literary figures represents the clearest articulation of his ambivalent position on Transcendentalism.