Walking in the Wilderness

This book investigates the adaptation and transformation of the European peripatetic tradition in nineteenth-century America; in particular Henry David Thoreau’s literary walks and their visual counterparts in American landscape painting. Although Thoreau’s perambulations in New World nature have been stated in scholarship, no study has offered a comparative analysis, nor has the philosophic-contemplative aspect of his 'art of Walking” been sufficiently studied. The present study puts his walking pattern into a transatlantic as well as interdisciplinary context and illuminates the uniquely American aesthetic-philosophic considerations underlying the genre of the walk in American nineteenth-century literature and painting.This book investigates the adaptation and transformation of the European peripatetic tradition in nineteenth-century America; in particular Henry David Thoreau's literary walks and their visual counterparts in American landscape painting. Although Thoreau's perambulations in New World nature have been stated in scholarship, no study has offered a comparative analysis, nor has the philosophic-contemplative aspect of his 'art of Walking" been sufficiently studied. The present study puts his walking pattern into a transatlantic as well as interdisciplinary context and illuminates the uniquely American aesthetic-philosophic considerations underlying the genre of the walk in American nineteenth-century literature and painting.