Syllabus: Thoreau Through the Year

by Peter Saint-Andre

Last Updated: 2022-03-01

What follows is the draft of a syllabus for a monthly reading group devoted to Henry David Thoreau. The primary readings are the chapters from Walden; the secondary readings supplement our attention to Walden. The "wonderings" are questions we might ponder regarding the readings.

March

Readings

• Walden: Economy
• Seasons of Thoreau: March
• Poem: "Forever in My Dream and in My Morning Thought"
• Poem: "Rumors from an Aeolian Harp"
• The Upland Farm: Farm
• The Upland Farm: Seed

Wonderings

• Why really did Thoreau go to live at Walden Pond?
• Why did he return to "civilized life"?
• What literary genre best fits Walden? Novel, epic, treatise, travelogue, apologia?
• For whom did Thoreau write Walden? Do you feel that he writes for you? (See paragraph 21.)
• How true is it that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (paragraph 9)? Thoreau says that "all men want [i.e., lack] ... something to be" - does this imply that what matters is not status but true accomplishment - "getting something simple and honest done in this world", passing a "sincere life", aiming at "something high", etc.?
• Does integrity require leisure (paragraph 6) - or, at least, "the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful", not to "play at life, or study it merely" but to "earnestly live it from beginning to end" - "at once trying the experiment of living"?
• What is the "finest fruit" (or "ultimate expression" or "highest use") of human existence - the "higher and more ethereal life" to which the "spring of springs" would arouse us from our "torpid state" (paragraph 60)?
• In what way does growth require ignorance paragraph 6?
• What does it mean to be the slave and prisoner of your own opinion of yourself (paragraph 8)? How is this different from a slavery to opinion in general as in the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic? What is self-emancipation and how might it be achieved?
• What are the implications of taking an experimental approach to life (paragraph 72)?
• What are the "true problems of life" (paragraph 17)?
• What are the "inward riches" that lead to the "elevation of mankind" (paragraph 19)? Is outward poverty necessary to generate inward riches?
• What does Thoreau have in mind when he speaks of adventuring on life paragraph 20?
• What do you think about Thoreau’s analysis of necessity vs luxury?
• What can we learn from Thoreau about living in the present moment ("to stand on the meeting of two eternities" in paragraph 23)?
• By what measures does Thoreau consider his life in the woods to be successful? What was the private business he transacted there? (paragraph 32)
• What does Thoreau mean by "the furniture of the mind" (paragraph 54)?
• What does Thoreau mean by the luxurious, dissipated, degraded rich (paragraph 55)? How are these thoughts related to his discussion of the truthfulness, nobleness, and unconscious beauty of life pursued by a home’s indweller (paragraph 67)?
• When Thoreau says in paragraph 56 that we have "become the tools of our tools" and have "settled down on earth and forgotten heaven" (or that "we cut our spiritual bread" very thin), what exactly does he have in mind? How do these insights apply today? And how are they related to his critique of the division of labor?

April

• Walden: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
• Seasons of Thoreau: April
• Essay: "Walking"
• Poem: "Walden"
• Poem: "It Is a Real Place"
• Poem: "Prayer"
• The Upland Farm: Preparing
• The Upland Farm: Sprout

May

• Walden: Reading
• Walden: Sounds
• Seasons of Thoreau: May
• Essay: "The Succession of Forest Trees"
• Poem: "May Morning"
• Poem: "Nature"
• The Upland Farm: Planting
• The Upland Farm: Tree
• The Upland Farm: Trust

June

• Walden: Solitude
• Walden: Visitors
• Seasons of Thoreau: June
• Essay: "Civil Disobedience"
• Poem: "Sic Vita"
• Poem: "The Summer Rain"
• Poem: "Great Friend"
• The Upland Farm: Flower

July

• Walden: The Bean-Field
• Seasons of Thoreau: July
• Essay: "A Walk to Wachusett"
• Poem: "Not Unconcerned Wachusett Rears His Head"
• Poem: "The Mountains in the Horizon"
• The Upland Farm: Cultivating

August

• Walden: The Village
• Walden: The Ponds
• Seasons of Thoreau: August
• Poem: "Friendship"
• Poem: "The Vireo"
• Poem: "Haze"
• Poem: "When Breathless Noon Hath Paused on Hill and Vale"
• Poem: "It Is No Dream of Mine"
• The Upland Farm: Magnanimity

September

• Walden: Baker Farm
• Seasons of Thoreau: September
• Essay: "Life Wthout Principle"
• Poem: "The Poet's Delay"
• Poem: "Sympathy"
• Poem: "I Seek the Present Time"
• Poem: "I Mark the Summer's Swift Decline"
• Poem: "Conscience Is Instinct Bred in the Bone"
• The Upland Farm: Fruit
• The Upland Farm: Harvesting

October

• Walden: Higher Laws
• Seasons of Thoreau: October
• Essay: "Autumnal Tints"
• Poem: "Independence"
• Poem: "Manhood"
• Poem: "The Fall of the Leaf"
• Poem: "The Book of Gems"
• Poem: "I Am the Autumnal Sun"
• Poem: "On Fields O'er Which the Reaper's Hand Has Passed"
• The Upland Farm: Independence
• The Upland Farm: Leaf

November

• Walden: Brute Neighbors
• Walden: House Warming
• Seasons of Thoreau: November
• Essay: "Wild Apples"
• Poem: "The Moon Now Rises to Her Absolute Rule"
• Poem: "Music"
• The Upland Farm: Storing

December

• Walden: Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors
• Walden: Winter Animals
• Seasons of Thoreau: December
• Poem: "The Rabbit Leaps"
• Poem: "The Inward Morning"
• Poem: "Pray to What Earth Does This Sweet Cold Belong"
• Poem: "At Midnight's Hour I Raised My Head"
• Poem: "Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life"
• The Upland Farm: Simplicity

January

• Walden: The Pond in Winter
• Seasons of Thoreau: January
• Essay: "A Winter Walk"
• Poem: "Brother Where Dost Thou Dwell"
• Poem: "Sometimes I Hear the Veery's Clarion"
• Poem: "The Moon"
• Poem: "I Do Not Fear My Thoughts Will Die"
• The Upland Farm: Bud

February

• Walden: Spring
• Walden: Conclusion
• Seasons of Thoreau: February
• Poem: "To a Marsh Hawk in Spring"
• Poem: "When in Some Cove I Lie"
• Poem: "My Life Has Been the Poem"
• The Upland Farm: Offering

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