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Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau

Name: Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau
Brand: Harvard University Press
SKU: 9780674088474
Price: 65.99 USD
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Contributors:

Branka Arsic

Publisher:

Harvard University Press

Binding:

Hardcover

Book Category:

Literary Criticism, Philosophy, Science

Book Subcategory:

American, Movements, History

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Release Date:

2016-01-04

ISBN 13:

9780674088474

Weight:

1.8 lbs

Size:

9.40 x 6.40 x 1.40 inches

Pages:

480

Mint Condition +

product description

Description

Birds were never far from Thoreau's mind. They wing their way through his writing just as they did through his cabin on Walden Pond, summoned or dismissed at whim by his whistles. Emblematic of life, death, and nature's endless capacity for renewal, birds offer passage into the loftiest currents of Thoreau's thought. What Branka Arsic finds there is a theory of vitalism that Thoreau developed in response to his brother's death. Through grieving, Thoreau came to see life as a generative force into which everything dissolves. Death is not an annulment of life but the means of its transformation and reemergence.

Bird Relics traces Thoreau's evolving thoughts through his investigation of Greek philosophy and the influence of a group of Harvard vitalists who resisted the ideas of the naturalist Louis Agassiz. It takes into account materials often overlooked by critics: his Indian Notebooks and unpublished bird notebooks; his calendars that rewrite how we tell time; his charts of falling leaves, through which he develops a complex theory of decay; and his obsession with vegetal pathology, which inspires a novel understanding of the relationship between disease and health.

Arsic's radical reinterpretation of Thoreau's life philosophy gives new meaning to some of his more idiosyncratic habits, such as writing obituaries for people he did not know and frequenting estate sales, and raises important questions about the ethics of Thoreau's practice of appropriating the losses of others as if they were his own.

About the Author
Arsic, Branka: - Branka Arsic is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Thoreau

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