Location: [Reed College] [Department of English] [Laura Arnold][ Nation and Narration]Daily Readings
In Walden Thoreau is both beginning a text and a way of life. Post-colonial theorist Edward Said makes the following useful declaration about beginnings:
The problem with beginnings is one of those problems that, if allowed to, will confront one with equal intensity on a practical and on a theoretical level. Every writer knows that the choice of beginning for what he will write is crucial not only because it determines much of what follows but because a work's beginning is, practically speaking, the main entrance to what it offers. Moreover, in retrospect we can regard a beginning as the point at which, in a given work, the writer departs from all other works; a beginning immediately establishes relationships with works already existing, relationships of either continuity or antagonism or some mixture of both. But the moment we start to detail the features of a beginning--a moment likely to occur in examining many sorts of writers--we necessarily make special distinctions. Is a beginning the same as an origin? Is the beginning of a given work a real beginning--or is there some other, secret point that more authentically starts the work off? To what extent is a beginning ultimately a physical exigency and nothing more than that? (Beginnings 3).
To what extent is the opening of Walden both a practical and theoretical issue? As we have noted, during the period in which Walden was written, Americans were increasingly concerned with "newness" and tradition. As you read the beginning of Walden , I would like you to consider the issues raised but Said (including what the difference between a beginning and an origin might be), but here are some more specific questions as well to get you started:
1. Why did Fuller begin at Niagara Falls? Why does Thoreau begin his text in the summer? (Thoreau actually spent two years at Walden Pond. What are the advantages in compressing his experience into one seasonal year?)
2. Chapters one and two of Walden have often been talked about as a "paired introduction." Why does Thoreau begin with "Economy" and not "Where I Loved, and What I Lived For"? How are these two books parallel? What seems to be the purpose of each?
3. The language of introducing. Kathryn raised the question of why Fuller inserts poetry at strategic moments in her text. What purpose does the poem "The Pretensions of Poverty" serve at the end of "Economy"? What is the relationship between the narrator of this poem and the narrator of Walden? (Emerson asked in Self-Reliance, "Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong" (93). Why does Emerson "grudge" the poor money? What is Thoreau's position on poverty?
4. Said notes that "a beginning immediately establishes relationships with works already existing, relationships of either continuity or antagonism or some mixture of both" (Beginnings 3). Compare Thoreau's theories of reading to those of Emerson, Channing, and Fuller. What is the relationship between the sublime and literature? What is the relationship between literature and the self and/or nation? How does Thoreau feel about the average American?
Please read chapters 1-3 (pp. 1-75) for Monday. There is an excellent introduction to Thoreau and Walden both in our text and on-line at Thoreau's CyberSaunter.
Suggested readings:
Edward Said's Beginnings: Intention and Method. NY: Basic Books,
1975: 3-26.
Laura.Arnold@Reed.edu