Death and Grief in the Lives of Emerson and Thoreau:
What Can and Cannot be SharedThoreau Society presentations at ALA Conference 2002
Summary
On May 31, 2002, The Thoreau Society presented a panel at the American Literature Association annual conference in Long Beach, California. The presenters at the second Thoreau Society panel, "Transcending Tragedy: What Can and Cannot be Shared," had been asked to consider how (or whether) the Transcendentalists’ philosophy can help 21st-century citizens cope with a disaster of the magnitude of September 11, 2001. Without condescension to a less global historical era, the panelists focused on responses to death and grief in the lives of Emerson and Thoreau.
The "Transcending Tragedy" session was chaired by Thoreau Society board member Laura Dassow Walls. Selected participants' papers are reprinted here, with the authors’ permissions.
"Goodness and Grief: Emerson’s Pain" by Jennifer Gurley, Berkeley & Colgate
Why Emerson, although harrowed by numerous excruciating losses of loved ones, believed genuine grief is not to be shared even within one’s personal circle, let alone the reading public."In The Mo(u)rning" by David Justin Hodge, Harvard
Privacy and privation in Emerson and Thoreau. The relationship between solitude and wakefulness to life. How "the privative" bears upon individual privacy (alone-ness) in the case of Thoreau living at Walden."Thoreau & Sudden, Violent Death" by Randall Conrad, The Thoreau Project
Examines Thoreau’s journal entry of January 7, 1853 (viewing the result of a powdermill explosion) as the start of a grieving process Thoreau must undertake.
A Thoreau Chronology
More Books about Thoreau and his Times
Reading Thoreau
Best Web sites about Thoreau
Thoreau and the Underground Railroad
A Page in Thoreau's Journal
Christmas with the Thoreaus
Advanced Thoreau Studies from Calliope
including Death and Grief, Thoreau's Puns,
the Pickerel Passage, Potted-Plant-Man...- Updated April 27 2005
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