梭罗文学风格探析及其成因分析——以《瓦尔登湖》为例Thoreaus literary style and causes of the analysis of Walden as an example.pdfVIP

Introduction 1. Thoreau and Walden Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is among the most eminent American writers in the nineteenth century. For his transcendentalist thoughts and practices, he has been claimed as a leading Transcendentalist. For his vivid description of nature, he has been referred to as a naturalist. For his advocation of individual resistance to civil government, he has been termed as an individual anarchist. Throughout his life he worked hard to polish his craft as a poet, an essayist and a prose writer. His restless experimentation with language and meaning has made him a writer of a distinctive style that interests many researchers. Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), a reflection upon simple living, social experiment and spiritual discovery, and his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, an argument for individuals to prevent the government, the agent of injustice, from overruling their consciences. However, like quite a number of writers, Thoreau’s value is not recognized until his death. His books, journals, essays, and poetry total over 20 volumes, but only two got published during his lifetime, namely, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden. The dreary sales volume of the two books further proved his unpopularity. For most of the time he received criticisms from his contemporaries like the American writer James Russell Lowell and the British writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who thought Thoreau was an imitator of Emerson, an amateurish naturalist and a wild dawdler. Later he was reevaluated, especially in the twentieth century. His works not only make himself “a cultural icon” for modern Americans, but also influe