1. Emerson--Nature 1836
    2.
    1. After quitting the ministry travelling to england and meeting Wordsworth, Coleridge and other Romantic poets and philosophers
    2. Introduction
      3.
      1. Pastoral polarities
        1. Debate--back to vergil--Youth against age, etc
        2. Solitude vs. company
        3. Nature vs. Art
        4. Simple vs. complex
        5. Innocence vs. experience
        6. Freedom vs. constriction
        7. Books vs. nature
        8. Indoors vs. come away
        9. Spiritual vs. material--through material
          10.
      2. Style of Emerson and Thoreau--secular preaching; epigrams and proverbs--prophetic; like Jesus--they that understand will have more; they that dont will have less
      3. American polarities
        1. Old--traditional--European--Eastern--sepulchres of the fathers--tradition and religion
        2. New--innovative--orginal--Wild and West
          3.
      4. What is nature:
        1. Two answers--philosophically, the not me, the not soul--answers to that question?
        2. Common use--the not art, that which is humans have made or mixed
          3.
          1. Human art as insignificant in face of nature: is this true? Human effects on landscape and life forms are profound--maybe--the sahara, the dead zone in the gulf of mexico, palm springs and israel
          2. Is nature earthbound or does it include volcanoes and stars? Is the sea nature in the same way that plant communities are
            3.
    3. Chapter 1--Nature [the appreciation and enjoyment of it]
      4.
      1. Stars
        1. Solitude: get away from study; get away from reading and writing--look at stars for sense of solitude--anybody try that?
        2. Perpetual presence of the *sublime
        3. Envoys of beauty--just familiarity breeds our lack of wonder
        4. Awake reverence
          5.
      2. All nature is in perfect design--integrity of impression by manifold objects
      3. Appreciation is distinctive and involves childlike sensibility--not mature man--Clare, Wdsth
      4. In the woods is perpetual youth
      5. All moods are reinforced or authorized
      6. Return to reason and faith
      7. Egotism vanishes
      8. I become a transparent eyeball, I am nothing--I see all [Buddhist]
      9. In the wilderness--paean
      10. I am part and particle of God
      11. Occult relation between man and vegetable
      12. Whatever the mood it is reflected in observation
        1. the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colorsof the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
          2.
      13. ***Try experiment--describe the same scene in different moods
        14.
    4. Chapter 3--Beauty
      1. Ancient Greeks called world Cosmos--beauty [Thoreau says this too]
        2.
        1. Pleasure--given by all things or the plastic power of the eye
          2.
          1. Outline, color, moiton, grouping ***
          2. Eye as composer, perspective, music, light, individual forms agreeable to the eye: describe one-- wheat ear, wings and forms of most birds, tree, cloud***
            3.
        2. Threefold aspect
          3.
          1. simple perception--coming outdoors is medicinal
            1. horizon
            2. daybreak to sun-up described--dawn movement--hymn to dawn
            3. hymn to afternoon--sunset--good description***
            4. winter also celebrated and the changing of the same place over the seasonal shift--newness
            5. Danger of hunting this beauty too eagerly
              6.
          2. The spritual aspect--the setting for heroes--relation to virtue
          3. The intellectual aspect--relation to thought--contemplation
            4.
        3. Contemplation and action--beauty moves us to create beauty in action***--result or expression of nature in miniature--stimulates to produce--is this happening?
        4. Beauty is not the final end
          5.
  2. Susan Cooper--"Rural Hours"
    3.
    1. Daughter of James Fenimore Cooper
    2. Model of description
      3.
      1. Continuity and discontinuity--snow melt and ice; progressions
      2. Observation: prospect; framing; arrangment--Emerson--April 10
      3. Pigeons lost--winter dying March 27
      4. Orioles--April 11
      5. Fern--Wed May 3
      6. Tree description--May 6
      7. Ensemble--May 15
      8. Death--May 16
      9. Non-native--May 19
      10. Snake--May 29
      11. Springs--May 30
      12. Overall structures
        13.
  3. Thoreau--Walking
    4.
    1. Saunterre--how to walk
    2. Freedom and Sanctity
    3. Walking vs staying home
    4. Pastoral polarities
      5.
      1. Anti surveyor
        2.
    5. Many walks within ten miles--new prospects
      6.
      1. Wilderness in vicinity
      2. Roads going nowhere
      3. Private vs. public roads--british and european footpaths--p.4
    6. Which way to go
      7.
      1. Attractions of southwest--Europe vs. California--westward march--wilderness out there
      2. Western march
      3. Sunset
      4. Columbus
      5. Big trees
      6. Big Sky country in North America
      7. Home of the younger sons
    7. West is the wild 2.3
      8.
      1. Praise of wildness--pro and con
      2. SUV advertising
      3. Love of swamp over garden
      4. Wetland preservation--value of the wild [can it be wild if it is a preserve?] 2.4
        1. Working the virgin soil--contradictions
          2.
      5. Celebration of native not european or cultivated species
    8. Need for a literature to give expression to nature--not pastoral 2.5
      9.
      1. The language for that--the beats; Robinson Jeffers
      2. Wild vs. Domestic animals
    9. Desire for wild names
      10.
      1. Society vs. nature
      2. Prolong childhood, be not adults
      3. Praise of ignorance and wonder 3.2
    10. Like Emerson, looking for spiritual growth beyond nature
      11.
      1. We hug the earth--how rarely we mount
      2. Tree climbing--this Friday 3.3
      3. Live in the present [journals]
    11. Conclusion:
      1. The sunset
      2. Allegory of a great awakening
      3. Sauntering toward the Holy Land
      4. Holiness