Week 4-Thoreau, Buell, Phillips
Guide for Week 4 -
Read Thoreau's essay "Walking" (http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking1.html
) and browse closely through /A
Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851/ (one challenge for the year will be to
develop an adequate reading methodology - not an interpretive one - for
works like this). Assess Buell's arguments regarding 'outer mimesis,' 'the
dual accountability thesis' and related issues in his chapter "Representing
the Environment" from/The Environmental Imagination/ and read Dana
Phillips's critique in "Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of
Ecology," attached. (A followup response from Buell appears in his/The
Future of Environmental Criticism/). A suggested aim is not just to
adjudicate this debate, but to reframe it in ways that make it
(eco-politically) productive.