Reading Thoreau in the 21st Century

This essay offers a critical re-assessment of Henry David Thoreau’s life and legacy in the context of contemporary critiques of the mainstream environmental tradition. It takes seriously concerns raised about Thoreau’s status as a privileged white male, but calls for more nuance. In particular, the essay challenges those portraits of Thoreau that emphasize Thoreau’s status as a devotee of American nature religion to the exclusion of Thoreau’s significant contributions as an abolitionist and as a prescient critic of an emergent culture of consumption that relied on slavery for its success. The essay assesses the ambivalent legacies that Thoreau left in his wake, demonstrating those moments when Thoreau’s public life as a social critic chafed against his most deeply held spiritual orientations and practices. This essay also argues for the necessity of reading and teaching Thoreau side-by-side with the work of Black writers whose renderings of human-nature relationships both resonate with and depart from Thoreau’s Transcendentalist vision.