The Maine Woods Contributor(s): Thoreau, Henry David (Author), Fleck, Richard F. (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 088240959X ISBN-13: 9780882409597 Publisher: Westwinds Press OUR PRICE: $17.09 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy - Literary Collections | Essays - Nature | Essays |
Dewey: B |
LCCN: 2013036262 |
Series: Literary Naturalist |
Physical Information: 0.52" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.64 lbs) 244 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - New England - Geographic Orientation - Maine |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Posthumously published in 1864, The Maine Woods depicts Henry David Thoreau's experiences in the forests of Maine, and expands on the author's transcendental theories on the relation of humanity to Nature. On Mount Katahdin, he faces a primal, untamed Nature. Katahdin is a place "not even scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world." In Maine he comes in contact with "rocks, trees, wind and solid earth" as though he were witness to the creation itself. Of equal importance, The Maine Woods depicts Thoreau's contact with the American Indians and depicts his tribal education of learning the language, customs, and mores of the Penobscot people. Thoreau attempts to learn and speak the Abenaki language and becomes fascinated with its direct translation of natural phenomena as in the word sebamook--a river estuary that never loses is water despite having an outlet because it also has an inlet. The Maine Woods illustrates the author's deeper understanding of the complexities of the primal wilderness of uplifted rocky summits in Maine and provides the reader with the pungent aroma of balsam firs, black spruce, mosses, and ferns as only Thoreau could. This new, redesigned edition features an insightful foreword by Thoreau scholar Richard Francis Fleck.
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Contributor Bio(s): Fleck, Richard F.: - Richard F. Fleck's first published work, Palms, Peaks and Prairies, was published in 1967 when he was a young professor of English at the University of Wyoming. After twenty-five years (1965-1990) of teaching literature on the high plains of Wyoming and publishing numerous books including Henry Thoreau and John Muir Among the Indians and Critical Perspectives on Native American Literature and introductions to trade paperback editions of Thoreau and Muir, he and his wife Maura moved to Denver where he became a college dean on the Auraria Campus in Denver, Colorado until his retirement. During this period of time (1990-2001) he published A Colorado River Reader (2000) and in retirement wrote and published a collection of his mountaineering essays Breaking Through the Clouds (2005); a new and expanded edition of this book entitled Desert Rims to Mountains High, WestWinds Press/The Pruett Series. His new mountaineering, biographical and literary essays as well as his poetry and short fiction can be seen online at www.hubpages.com/juneaukid (which is now a featured hub). Fleck is a contributor to the Kindle Book, Funny Travel Stories, 2012 and is also author of a brand new Kindle Book, Canada and Beyond: Poems of Other Lands. He is married with 3 children and 7 grandchildren. |