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Thoreau’s Cartographic Explorations: Imaging Nature through Maps -- John W. Hessler, Library of Congress
| Location: | Maine, United States |
| Lecture Date: | 2009-10-16 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2009-06-29 |
| Announcement ID: |
169379 |
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Henry David Thoreau is famous as the author of /Walden/ (1854), /The Maine Woods/ (1864), and other classics of American transcendental literature. Less well known is his work as a land surveyor in Concord, Mass., work that allowed him to examine nature at length and in detail. Still unexamined is his interest in the early European maps of North America. Thoreau gave a brief history of the mapping of New England in his /Cape Cod/ (1865). He also carefully redrew to scale maps by Champlain, Wytfliet, Ortelius, and other early writers on the New World for his unpublished “Canadian” and “Indian” notebooks. Mr. Hessler’s recent identification of two copies of Champlain’s maps as being Thoreau’s handiwork has led him to investigate this hitherto unappreciated aspect of Thoreau’s life and works, and to locate other map copies by Thoreau now missing from the notebooks. These cartographic explorations, especially with respect to the recording of indigenous toponyms, informed Thoreau’s notions of the American wilderness and his environmental imagination. This lecture is the first public presentation of this exciting, new research.
7pm, 16 October 2009. Hannaford Lecture Hall, Abromson Center, University of Southern Maine (Portland Campus). Free; open to the public
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