Overview

A rediscovery of Thoreau's interactions with everyday objects and how they shaped his thought. Though we may associate Henry David Thoreau with ascetic renunciation, Thoreau accumulated a variety of tools, art, and natural specimens throughout his life as a homebuilder, surveyor, and collector. In some of these objects, particularly Indigenous artifacts, Thoreau perceived the presence of their original makers, and he called such objects ""mindprints."" Thoreau believed that these collections could teach him how his experience, his world, fit into the wider, more diverse (even incoherent) assemblage of other worlds created and recreated by other beings every day. In this book, Gaskell explores how a profound environmental aesthetics developed from this insight and shaped Thoreau's broader thought.

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9780226836072

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Reviews

“‘I have travelled a good deal in Concord,’ Thoreau wrote in Walden, famously mocking the notion that travel takes place beyond the borders of one’s hometown. Devotees of the transcendentalist philosopher will be grateful that, nearly two centuries later, Gaskell took up residence in the adjacent town of Lexington and fixed his uncommon powers of perception on his erstwhile neighbor’s life and writing, traveling imaginatively with Thoreau to yield this extraordinary book. Gaskell unsettles and expands our understanding of Thoreau by homing in on the sensory particulars of his surroundings, cherished revelations of worlds past, present, and still to come.” -- Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'Margaret Fuller: A New American Life'

Author Information

Ivan Gaskell is professor of cultural history and museum studies at Bard Graduate Center, New York City. He is the author or editor of several books, most recently Paintings and the Past: Philosophy, History, Art.

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