American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
From his day to ours, Henry David Thoreau has provoked sharply opposite reactions, ranging from reverence to dismissal. Scholars have regularly offered conflicting assessments of the significance of his work, the evolution of his thought, even the facts of his life. Some disagreements are in the eye of the beholder, but many follow from challenges posed by his own cross-grained idiosyncrasies. Thoreau was a leading figure in the American Transcendentalist movement and was an advocate for self-reliance who never broke away from home, a self-professed mystic now also acclaimed as a pioneer life-scientist, and a seminal theorist of nonviolent protest who defended the most notorious guerilla fighter of his day. Join us as author Lawrence Buell explores the thought and impact of this iconic, but highly controversial figure. Following Professor Buell's presentation, author Megan Marshall will join the discussion on Thoreau's life and will open the conversation to audience questions.
Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His previous books include Literary Transcendentalism, New England Literary Culture, The Environmental Imagination, and Emerson. Among other prizes and awards, he received the Christian Gauss Award for Emerson and the Modern Language Association’s Jay Hubbell Award for lifetime contributions to American Literature studies. He was elected to AAS membership in October, 1991.
Megan Marshall is an associate professor of nonfiction writing at Emerson College. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and the London Review of Books. Her first biography, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005), won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. Her book, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 2014. Marshall was elected to AAS membership in May 2014.
Photo credit: Corinne Elicone.
