Henry David Thoreau and the Nick of Time: Temporality and Agency in Thoreau’s Era and Ours

Henry David Thoreau felt he was born in the nick of time, at the cusp of the modern global capitalist era, what he called in Walden "this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century." He wrote at a moment when the current trajectory of the Anthropocene was not yet fully formed, and his writing allows us to imagine alternatives. His effort to live between two eternities, the past and the future, involved both a sharp focus on the injustices of his own time and attention to the longer rhythms and cycles of time that resist the temporalities of "progress" and "efficiency." Thoreau wove ancient human and non-human understandings of time into the Concord of his present while resisting the historical pressures of his own world. To see the world more clearly, and to help save it from our worst human actions, Thoreau argued, we need to step outside of our ordinary perception of time and seize the moment. This collection of essays brings together a range of distinguished and exciting new Thoreau scholars from across the globe who address some of the implications of Thoreau's manifold explorations of the nature of time and their meaning for his world and ours--and show how sustained attention to a writer from our not-so-distant past can help us reimagine our future. Contributors include Albena Bakratcheva, Kathryn C. Dolan, Kathy Fedorko, Robert A. Gross, Richard Higgins, Ólafur Páll Jónsson, David G. Kristinsson, John J. Kucich, Henrik Otterberg, Robert Sattelmeyer, Benjamin Schacht, Paul Schacht, François Specq, Bergur Thorgeirsson, Robert Thorson, Laura Dassow Walls, and Elizabeth Hall Witherell. Read more