A rediscovery of Thoreau's interactions with everyday objects and how they shaped his thought.

Though we may associate Henry David Thoreau with ascetic renunciation, he accumulated a variety of tools, art, and natural specimens throughout his life as a homebuilder, surveyor, and collector. In some of these objects, particularly Indigenous artifacts, Thoreau perceived the presence of their original makers, and he called such objects "mindprints." Thoreau believed that these collections could teach him how his experience, his world, fit into the wider, more diverse (even incoherent) assemblage of other worlds created and re-created by other beings every day. In this book, Ivan Gaskell explores how a profound environmental aesthetics developed from this insight and shaped Thoreau's broader thought.

Author: Ivan Gaskell
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 11/22/2024
Pages: 240
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.14w x 0.87d
ISBN: 9780226836072

About the Author
Ivan Gaskell is professor of cultural history and museum studies at the Bard Graduate Center. He is the author or editor of several books, most recently Paintings and the Past: Philosophy, History, Art.