Table of Contents

Part 1 A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers: killing time; further down the stream of time. Part 2 The journal: picturing the world; the categorical imagination. Part 3 Walden: the worlding of Walden; conjuring the past.

Reviews

"This book makes a major contribution to American literary criticism and Thoreau studies. Peck’s readings are sensitive and original, and he demonstrates brilliantly the intellectual integrity of Thoreau’s thought and writing. Peck’s graceful and lucid style and the attractive, pertinent illustrations make this book a real treasure."—Emory Elliott, Presidential Chair of English, University of California, Riverside


"By following closely their interwoven order of composition, Peck constructs from A Week, the Journal, and Walden a speaking subject called Thoreau, whose intellectual action bridges the gaps within and among these ’completed fragments,’ unifying them processually rather than formally. The Thoreau thus constructed assumes his rightful station among those writers, from Wordsworth to Gertrude Stein, who took it upon themselves to reorder human consciousness in a modern world without beginnings or endings."—William Spengemann, Professor of English, Dartmouth College