Thoreau's Poetics of Nature

Thoreau’s descriptions of natural phenomena display the care and acuteness of scientific observation, and this may have overshadowed recognition of his aesthetic sensibility. The perceptual details of Thoreau’s observations are pervaded by a sensitive appreciation of natural beauty. Moreover, the aesthetic in his account consists not only in the visual appreciation of visual beauty but is multi-sensory and engaged. Thoreau’s writings document a rich yet uncustomary understanding of the appreciation of nature as aesthetic engagement. Moreover, we find in his work ideas and themes that carry us in the direction of Dewey’s aesthetics and existential phenomenology, and the tenor of his perceptions becomes explicit in the emerging interest in environmental and everyday aesthetics.No Beauty, No Peace: Rethinking the Role of Beauty and Immediacy in Ecocritical Criticism, ed. Peter Quigley and Scott Slovik (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018), pp. 41-50