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Le désir de solitude est omniprésent dans l'œuvre de Jean-Jacques Rousseau et de Henry David Thoreau. Dans leurs cas, elle s'accompagne d'une expérience de la nature. Ce mémoire propose une étude des raisons qui poussent ces deux auteurs à rechercher cette solitude. Le premier chapitre analyse la solitude originelle évoquée dans le Discours sur l'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes. Rousseau y vante le mode de vie solitaire et autosuffisante de l'homme du pur état de nature. Nous verrons dans le deuxième chapitre, comment l'auteur explique dans les Lettres à Malesherbes et les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire sa nature solitaire et le rôle accessoire de la nature. Dans le troisième, nous examinons ses Confessions où il exprime son désir de vivre éloigné des hommes qui le tourmentent. Le quatrième chapitre est consacré à Thoreau et son désir de vivre une vie indépendante et délibérée en pleine nature. Il explique ce désir dans son livre bien connu Walden. Le cinquième chapitre se concentre sur les excursions de Thoreau.

This dissertation examines American attitudes towards death from the colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. I begin with a close analysis of the thanatology of the Congregational church in New England, before demonstrating the lasting influence of Puritan thought on three later writers: Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen Crane. In contrast to purely cultural studies of mortality in America (including those by Phillipe Ariès, David Stannard and Michael Steiner), my investigation discusses the philosophical difficulties that obstruct any attempt to speak about death. Building on Jacques Derrida’s work in Aporias (1993), I identify three logical impasses that interrupt Puritan writing on mortality: the indeterminacy, singularity and finality of death. While Edwards, Thoreau and Crane write in different circumstances and diverse genres, I argue that they are sensitive to these same three aporias when they discuss death. In this regard, they resist a broader post-Puritan tendency (in both scientific and sentimental texts) to minimize the uncertainties surrounding human mortality and approach death as a universal (rather than radically singular) phenomenon. While my study situates each of its authors in the cultural and intellectual contexts in which they worked, it also challenges the notion that it is possible to write a history of death. Speaking strictly, mankind’s relationship to death can never change. It is always, in fact, a non-relation. The very idea of death destabilizes our most fundamental historical and literary assumptions. Accordingly, my second chapter uses a deconstruction of Edwards’ theory of revivalism to argue that the New-England awakenings of the eighteenth century expressed the converts’ desire to renounce responsibility for their souls, rather than accept it. In my third chapter, I argue that those writings in which Thoreau registers what might seem to be a nihilistic fascination with dead and decaying bodies in fact express a sentimental desire for a peaceful death. Chapter four reads Stephen Crane’s poetry, fiction and journalism in the context of his Calvinist heritage, breaking down the distinction between his textual play with the concept of death and the Puritans’ “serious” attempts to come to terms with mortality.

This dissertation examines American attitudes towards death from the colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. I begin with a close analysis of the thanatology of the Congregational church in New England, before demonstrating the lasting influence of Puritan thought on three later writers: Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen Crane. In contrast to purely cultural studies of mortality in America (including those by Phillipe Ariès, David Stannard and Michael Steiner), my investigation discusses the philosophical difficulties that obstruct any attempt to speak about death. Building on Jacques Derrida’s work in Aporias (1993), I identify three logical impasses that interrupt Puritan writing on mortality: the indeterminacy, singularity and finality of death. While Edwards, Thoreau and Crane write in different circumstances and diverse genres, I argue that they are sensitive to these same three aporias when they discuss death. In this regard, they resist a broader post-Puritan tendency (in both scientific and sentimental texts) to minimize the uncertainties surrounding human mortality and approach death as a universal (rather than radically singular) phenomenon. While my study situates each of its authors in the cultural and intellectual contexts in which they worked, it also challenges the notion that it is possible to write a history of death. Speaking strictly, mankind’s relationship to death can never change. It is always, in fact, a non-relation. The very idea of death destabilizes our most fundamental historical and literary assumptions. Accordingly, my second chapter uses a deconstruction of Edwards’ theory of revivalism to argue that the New-England awakenings of the eighteenth century expressed the converts’ desire to renounce responsibility for their souls, rather than accept it. In my third chapter, I argue that those writings in which Thoreau registers what might seem to be a nihilistic fascination with dead and decaying bodies in fact express a sentimental desire for a peaceful death. Chapter four reads Stephen Crane’s poetry, fiction and journalism in the context of his Calvinist heritage, breaking down the distinction between his textual play with the concept of death and the Puritans’ “serious” attempts to come to terms with mortality.

Throughout the nineteenth century, walking for leisure and for spiritual endeavor in America correlated with the rise of literary romanticism. This burgeoning fashion of pedestrian travel, coupled with an impulse to experience the ever expanding nation, spawned a new and enduring subgenre in American letters – the walking text. Many scholars consider Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to be the century’s greatest literary amblers and naturalists; while their catalogs of walking literature are foundational, they are not exclusive. “Beautiful Day. Pleasant Walk: Walking and Landscape in Works of Estwick Evans, John D. Godman, Elizabeth Fries Ellet, and Bradford Torrey” aims to establish the importance of several underappreciated nineteenth century American pedestrians and landscapes. In addition to analyzing the development and importance of walking texts throughout the century, this dissertation also considers the geographies over which the authors traveled. The northern grounds of Ohio’s forgotten Great Black Swamp (Evans) and Philadelphia’s bucolic Wissahickon Creek (Godman), team with the southern worlds of rural Antebellum landscapes (Ellet) and Civil War battlefields (Torrey) to create a compelling map of nineteenth century America. Finally, through first-hand, authorial accounts this study discusses each terrain’s historical contexts as well as their current conditions.

<p>Abstract</p><p>This paper is about the philosophies created by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The purpose is to show the high degree of similarities between Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s philosphy.</p><p>At first glance, it seems far-fetched to suggest an affinity between them; the differences in style and choice of subjects, have most certainly contributed to the fact that very few comparisons so far have been made. There is no evidence that one experienced any influence over the other, neither writer seems to have been aware of the other. Also their different areas of use during the 20th century, may have influenced the almost total lack of search for affinity. Thoreau’s philosphy has often been used by environmentalist movements, while Nietzsche has been connected to a wide range of various strivings, such as totalitarian regimes, individualistic artists and post-modern thinkers.</p><p>But if one disregard these facts, look beyond the differences, and break down their texts in search for their most fundamental opinions, one will see that Nietzsche and Thoreau shared a number of concerns. They were both ciritical to many aspects of the modern civilisation, espacially the way of life it encouraged. It was a life style, deep rooted in an obstructive tradition, that did not take the very essential conditions of life into consideration. This was both Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s opinion, and their philosophies represent a willingness to re-establish a way of life that ignores all traditions hostile to life.</p><p>Both of them criticize the religion and its moral of work, the modern science, and many institutions of the modern society – the schools and the prisons for example. But they also praise things, things they claim to have a value in contrast to the modern way of life – the simple things. Both Thoreau and Nietzsche praise the solitude life style, the silent walking in the wilderness, the simple but healthy food, as well as some intellectual stimulus, especially good litterature and music. All these simple things contribute to Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s opinion of life; it should be looked upon with the eyes of a child. Life should be like a play.</p><p>The title of this paper is Philosphers of the Rooster and the Morning. The title suggests the similarities I have found between Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies. They both announce an awakening. For them, a new morning has broken, and this paper shows the similar circumstances they give credit for their awakening.</p>

Abstract This paper is about the philosophies created by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The purpose is to show the high degree of similarities between Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s philosphy. At first glance, it seems far-fetched to suggest an affinity between them; the differences in style and choice of subjects, have most certainly contributed to the fact that very few comparisons so far have been made. There is no evidence that one experienced any influence over the other, neither writer seems to have been aware of the other. Also their different areas of use during the 20th century, may have influenced the almost total lack of search for affinity. Thoreau’s philosphy has often been used by environmentalist movements, while Nietzsche has been connected to a wide range of various strivings, such as totalitarian regimes, individualistic artists and post-modern thinkers. But if one disregard these facts, look beyond the differences, and break down their texts in search for their most fundamental opinions, one will see that Nietzsche and Thoreau shared a number of concerns. They were both ciritical to many aspects of the modern civilisation, espacially the way of life it encouraged. It was a life style, deep rooted in an obstructive tradition, that did not take the very essential conditions of life into consideration. This was both Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s opinion, and their philosophies represent a willingness to re-establish a way of life that ignores all traditions hostile to life. Both of them criticize the religion and its moral of work, the modern science, and many institutions of the modern society – the schools and the prisons for example. But they also praise things, things they claim to have a value in contrast to the modern way of life – the simple things. Both Thoreau and Nietzsche praise the solitude life style, the silent walking in the wilderness, the simple but healthy food, as well as some intellectual stimulus, especially good litterature and music. All these simple things contribute to Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s opinion of life; it should be looked upon with the eyes of a child. Life should be like a play. The title of this paper is Philosphers of the Rooster and the Morning. The title suggests the similarities I have found between Thoreau’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies. They both announce an awakening. For them, a new morning has broken, and this paper shows the similar circumstances they give credit for their awakening.

This dissertation explores the importance of the panorama for American Renaissance writers' participation in ideological formations in the antebellum period. I analyze how Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wells Brown, Henry Box Brown, and Harriet Beecher Stowe use the panorama as a metaphorical site to contest their different positions on epistemological and sociopolitical agendas such as transcendentalism, masculinist expansionism, and radical abolitionism. Emerson uses the panorama as a key metaphor to underpin his transcendental idealism and situate it in contemporary debates on vision, gender, and race. Connecting the panorama with optical theories on light and color, Emerson appropriates them to theorize his transcendental optics and makes a hierarchical distinction between light/transparency/panorama as metaphors for spirit, masculinity, and race-neutral man versus color/opacity/myopic vision for body, femininity, and racial-colored skin. In his paean to the moving panorama, Thoreau expresses his desire for Emersonian correspondence between nature and the spirit through transcendental panoramic vision. However, Thoreau's esteem for nature's materiality causes his panoramic vision to be corporeal and empirical in its deviation from the decorporealized vision in Emerson?s notion of transparent eyeball. Hawthorne repudiates the Transcendentalists' and social reformers' totalizing and absolutist idealism through his critique of the panorama and the emphasis on opacity and ambiguity of the human mind and vision. Hawthorne reveals how the panorama satisfies the desire for visual and physical control over the rapidly expanding world and the fantasy of access to truth. Countering the dominant convention of the Mississippi panorama that objectifies slaves as a spectacle for romantic tourism, Box Brown and Wells Brown open up a new American subgenre of the moving panorama, the anti-slavery panorama. They reconstruct black masculinity by verbally and visually representing real-life stories of some male fugitive slaves and idealizing them as masculine heroes of the anti-slavery movement. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe criticizes how the favorable representation of slavery and the objectification of slaves in the Mississippi panorama and the picturesque help to construct her northern readers' uncompassionate and hard-hearted attitudes toward the cruel realities of slavery and presents Tom's sympathetic and humanized "eyes" as an alternative vision.

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