TY  - BOOK
AU  - Verena Kerting
PY  - 2021
CY  - Berlin, Germany
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
TI  - Henry David Thoreau’s Aesthetics
T2  - A Modern Approach to the World
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1100203
N2  - The aim of the analysis is to show how Thoreau anticipated modern, 20th century notions of world and art. Following a summary of Baumgarten’s, Leibniz’, Descartes’ and Kant’s aesthetic theories five basic aesthetic questions are formulated. A close reading of Walden and the Journal answers these questions in regard to Thoreau’s artistic approach. The close reading documents his life-long struggle for an adequate perception of the phenomena that «made his world». To Thoreau even the most trivial thing expressed its divine character through its specific beauty. The last two chapters of the analysis reveal the connections that exist between Thoreau’s aesthetics of the trivial and 20th century aesthetics, between his notion of nature as expression and recent biosemiotic theory.
KW  - Thoreau, Henry David, Ästhetik, Transzendentalismus, Biosemiotik, Naturwahrnehmung, Experimentalismus
LA  - English
ER  -