At the turn of the nineteenth century, the America was entangled among the very profound social issue of racial tensions。 For the next hundred years or so after the abolition of Slavery in the Civil War in 1865, the American society witnessed the Blacks’ struggling fight for equality。 In his declining years, Thoreau has clear-cut stand for Abolition Movement and the pursuit of equality。 And his impassioned A Plea for Captain John Brown was no doubt the strongest voice of his life。 

     The Civil Rights Movement, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, promoted Thoreau’s theories of Civil Disobedience and Peaceful Revolution。 As a more tender and civilized approach to solving social conflicts, it testified that Thoreau’s theories of social change is much more rational than the others and embodied a much higher wisdom of human being。

     Thoreau’s rebel image was much beloved by “The Lost Generation” in 1920s。 Many of these writers had been enlisted in World War I。 They were still fresh in their memory of the war’s destructive consequences and got even more doubts about its meaning。 Demonstrating antiwar emotions, most of their works were expressing depressed and discontented feelings towards the society。 Questioning the behaviors of American Government, Thoreau’s progressive thoughts in his political theses were echoing the opinions of these writers during this period and therefore were becoming a fad of the time。 

2。 Literature Review

     Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American transcendentalist writer, stands out among those ecocritically studied classic writers。 He is termed as an environmentalist saint (Buell 25)。 The past few years have seen an explosion of interests in Thoreau as a nature writer and nature philosopher。 As a designated field surveyor and a nature historian with scientist-like credit, Thoreau has been claimed as one of the first conservationists, a limnologist, and “Father of American Phenology” (quoted in Whitford 292)。 Moreover, with his long standing reputation for his amazing language and rhetoric skills, Thoreau just suits well our era’s need for a model nature writer who not only has scientific accuracy and integrity but also shows literary originality。 He is now reappraised as the pioneer of ecological literature。 Thoreau, a writer of sophisticated language and metaphors, a transcendentalist with belief in philosophical ideals and against the conventional religious, political and economic beliefs, and an ecologist before the formal establishment of ecology discipline, has been a very controversial writer from the very beginning till now。 

     Thoreau’s ecological thought was indeed ahead of time。 However, with the worsening of the contemporary ecocrisis, the universal value of Thoreau’s ecological thought is becoming more and more important。 And what the modern writers of ecoliterature and eco-criticism should do before their transcendence over Thoreau is to retrieve Thoreau’s literature legacy and further their understanding of his thought in the present society。 To start with, they should by all means maintain a consisting exploration for sources of his thoughts。论文网

     Thoreau absorbed some ecological wisdom from oriental philosophy of simple life, and then put forward his far-reaching ecological thought。 For instance, Thoreau extracted and cited Confucian admonition in The Dial, including “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow; I have still joy in the midst of these things。 Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness, are to me as a floating cloud。” (Legge 15), and “Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui! With a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, while others could not have endured the distress, he did not allow his joy to be affected by it。 Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui!” (Legge 9)。 Such a kind of Chinese and Western cultural communication is vital in an era of ecocrisis。