A01=Daniel A. Nelson
American classics reimagined
American intellectual tradition
American literary criticism
American literary history
American literature classics
American naturalist tradition
American philosophy and literature
American poetic legacy
American transcendentalism
Author_Daniel A. Nelson
authors of the American canon
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challenging American poetry
classic poetry study
contemplative literature
Dickinson lyric style
Dickinson's fragments
Emily Dickinson poetry
enduring American writers
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experimental poetic voices
experimental poetry
exploring American poetry
groundbreaking poets
Henry David Thoreau writings
Immanent transcendence
innovative poetic form
literary analysis of Dickinson
literary analysis of Thoreau
literary contemplation
Literary conventions
literary experimentation
literary innovation in the 1800s
literary studies in poetry and prose
literature of freedom
meditations on nature
meditative American writers
nature and literature
Negative capability
New England writers
nineteenth century authors
philosophical American writers
philosophical approaches to literature
philosophical reflections in literature
philosophy of language in literature
poetic obscurity
poetry of solitude
poetry without boundaries
reading Dickinson anew
reading Thoreau anew
reflective nature writing
reflective prose style
rethinking classic writers
Rhetorical goals
Scrapbooks
semantic unit
syntactic system
taxonomic system
Teleology
Telos
Temporality
Thoreau's journal
Thoreau's journals
transcendentalist influence
unconventional American thinkers
unconventional perspectives in literature
Walden Pond inspiration
Word based poetics
writers and the natural world
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348562
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2025
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Seeing to See focuses on two American authors who are notoriously hard to classify: Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau. Dickinson proves challenging due to her short and obscure poems and Thoreau due to his insistence on capturing even the most seemingly mundane information. Daniel A. Nelson uncovers evidence that the works of these authors are often intentionally and painstakingly without aim or purpose. He argues that in their texts there is in fact an avoidance of teleological structures of writing and thinking, whereby a thing’s—or a word’s, or a text’s—value hinges on its relation to the world or other contexts.
In Nelson’s reading, Thoreau and Dickinson seem to be able to set aside all thought of distinct personal and professional goals, through which readers typically try to make an overarching sense out of, and to derive some form of profit from, disparate experiences, events, actions, and feelings. Further, both authors seem to be able to get outside of the worldview according to which the value and meaning of something, be it a natural object, a word, or an experience, is a function of its participation in a larger system. Examples of such systems include an ecosystem, taxonomic system, or syntactic system; a writer’s career, or life, or philosophy; even a single poem or journal entry. In the absence of such connections to broader categorical spheres, both writers force readers to contemplate the ineffable, constantly changing relation between words and the natural world. This contemporary reading of two iconic writers reframes their work and how readers think of nature, accepting, as these authors did, the potential freedom of the unknown.
In Nelson’s reading, Thoreau and Dickinson seem to be able to set aside all thought of distinct personal and professional goals, through which readers typically try to make an overarching sense out of, and to derive some form of profit from, disparate experiences, events, actions, and feelings. Further, both authors seem to be able to get outside of the worldview according to which the value and meaning of something, be it a natural object, a word, or an experience, is a function of its participation in a larger system. Examples of such systems include an ecosystem, taxonomic system, or syntactic system; a writer’s career, or life, or philosophy; even a single poem or journal entry. In the absence of such connections to broader categorical spheres, both writers force readers to contemplate the ineffable, constantly changing relation between words and the natural world. This contemporary reading of two iconic writers reframes their work and how readers think of nature, accepting, as these authors did, the potential freedom of the unknown.
Daniel A. Nelson is a writing assessment specialist at OnRamps at the University of Texas at Austin. His scholarship has appeared in Arizona Quarterly, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, and The Emily Dickinson Journal.
