It took Thoreau five years to write Walden after he had left his house in the woods。 It is far from a simple account of his physical life at the pond。 Beautifully integrated with the casual narration, this book is a wealth of thought, indicating Thoreau’s wish to write a book of how to live wisely。 His main purpose is to tell people how to enjoy a simple life。

During his lifetime, Thoreau was unknown for this book and Walden did not sell 2000 copies during Thoreau’s short lifetime and was almost completely ignored by critics in the United States。

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 In previous studies, Thoreau’s Walden has always been interpreted as a classic textbook of eco-literature。 Walden was regarded as a classic of American nature writing and was profiled as the first ten books that shaped the American character by American Heritage in 1985。 In the second chapter of American scholar Roderick Nash’s The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics published in 1987, influences of Thoreau and his ecological ethics are analyzed。 And Lawrence Buell’s Thoreau and the Natural Environment also points out that Thoreau is today considered the first major interpreter of nature in American literary history, and the first American environmentalist saint。 Chinese scholars mainly focus on Thoreau’s ideas about nature, highly praising his respect for nature and further affirming his important role in eco-literature, such as Chen Kai’s The Ecological Ideology: Thoreau’s view on Nature, and Guan Chunhua’s Thoreau and Nature: Reflections on Thoreau’s Walden Pond。 Besides, there are some other scholars who make an analysis of Thoreau’s writing style or do a comparative study between Thoreau’s thoughts and oriental philosophy, such as Weng Dexiu and Bi Lijun’s On the Structure and Symbolic Meaning in Walden and Yan Xiaochuan’s Taoist Elements in Thoreau’s Writings。

 But in fact, Walden is not merely an eco-writing with vivid depiction of nature and an affecting eulogy of nature。 Walden is undoubtedly the beginning and inspiration of eco-criticism。 To be more specific, Walden triggers later nature writers to abandon the human-centered ideology and pilots them to follow its writing style。 Besides, Walden’s natural connotations have a decisive influence on the formation and the development of eco-criticism。

Thoreau was not recognized by the same generation, but today when ecological ideas become increasingly mature, the world pays more and more attention to Thoreau and his works。 Thoreau was known as “the first natural exposition”, “The first environmentalist saint” in the 19th century American history, the natural concept reflected in whose works is considered as the source of American environmental awareness and ecological criticism。 In this context, we study Thoreau’s natural ideas and their ecological implication is undoubtedly significant。 This paper explores the different ecological effects of Thoreau’s Walden in three different periods of American history。 Thoreau’s ecological sense is greatly influenced by his simple and natural life in his hometown Concord and his family tradition of natural loving。 The advent of Walden in the 1850s evoked people’s instinct thinking on their life。 From the 1940s to the 1970s, people started to reflect on the way of life and production。 Walden awakened people to the construction of an amicable relationship between nature and human civilization。 Thoreau’s ecological ideology in Walden is the inspiration to eco-criticism, consequently several systematic theories coming into being, such as Earth Ethics and Deep ecology。 From the 1970s to now, Walden provides natural writers with a new way of experiencing life and a new perspective of collecting resources。 Thoreau’s ecological ideas in Walden have decisive effects on the eco-ideals of major scholars who have established significant theory in the field of eco-criticism。