A Simple Study on Henry David Thoreau(梭罗简单研究).docx

A Simple Study on Henry David Thoreau关于亨利戴维梭罗的简单研究学号：20120201246姓名：丁琳系别：12级外语系英语本科5班A Simple Study on Henry David ThoreauAbstract Henry David Thoreau (18171862) was an American philosopher, poet, and environmental scientist. He was a student of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was regarded as an representative of transcendentalism. He advocate people to return to the conscience and to close to the nature On of his famous and important book is the Walden.Key words Learned，avoidant personality，indifferent to fame and fortune ， disappointed in a love affair ,WaldenHenry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau inConcord, Massachusetts, into the modestNew England family of John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was born inJersey. His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, ledHarvards1766 student Butter Rebellion the first recorded student protest in the Colonies. David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become Henry David until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name changeHe had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia Thoreaus birthplacestill exists on Virginia Road in Concord. The house has recently been restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust, a nonprofit organization, and is now open to the public.He studied atHarvard College between 1833 and 1837. He lived inHollis Hall and took courses inrhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science.citation neededHe was a member of the Institute of 1770(now theHasty Pudding Club). A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the masters degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit:Harvard College offered it to graduates who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college.His comment was: Let every sheep keep its own skin, a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written onsheepskinvellum.he traditional professions open to college graduateslaw, the church, business, medicinefailed to interest Thoreau, 25so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught school inCanton, Massachusetts. After he graduated in 1837, he joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but resigned after a few weeks rather than administercorporal punishment.25He and his brother John then opened agrammar schoolin Concord in 1838 called Concord Academy.:25They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill fromtetanusin 1842 after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother Henrys arms. Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he metRalph Wald Emersonthrough a mutual friend. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, includingEllery Channing,Margaret Fullur, Bronson Alcott,Nathaniel Hawthorne and his sonJulian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical,The Dial, and Emerson lobbied editor Margaret Fuller to publish those writings. Thoreaus first essay published there wasAulus Persius Flaccus ,an essay on the playwright of the same name, published inThe Dialin July 1840.It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emersons suggestion. The first journal entry on October 22, 1837, reads, What are you doing now? he asked. Do you keep a journal? So I make my first entry to-day. Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followedTranscendentalism, a loose and eclecticidealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts, as Emerson wrote inNature(1836).1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau, designed byLeonard BaskinOn April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into theEmerson house .There, from 18411844, he served as the childrens tutor, editorial assistant, and repair man/gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson onStaten Island,and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representativeHorace Greeley. Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his familyspencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferiorgraphiteby using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found inNew Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Con process, was patented byNicolas-Jacques Contin 1795). His other source had beenTantiusques, an Indian operated mine inSturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to produce plumbago (graphite), which was used to inktypesetting machines.Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (1.2km2) of Walden Woods。When I first learn him I took him for a fairy. I think all he did was to search for the direct stimulation to the life. He graduate from the Harvard University .Its no doubt that he had gain a large amount of knowledge, but he did not satisfied with this. Just because those were all indirect knowledge which from only books but not true life he lived himself. So he went to the Walden to fund what the true life is ,w