Patrick Chura
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034935
- eISBN:
- 9780813038278
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034935.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most prominent environmental writers, supported himself as a land surveyor for much of his life, parceling land that would be sold off to loggers. This book ...
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Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most prominent environmental writers, supported himself as a land surveyor for much of his life, parceling land that would be sold off to loggers. This book analyzes this seeming contradiction to show how the best surveyor in Concord combined civil engineering with civil disobedience. Placing Thoreau's surveying in historical context, the book explains the cultural and ideological implications of surveying work in the mid-nineteenth century. It explains the ways in which Thoreau's environmentalist disposition and philosophical convictions asserted themselves, even as he reduced the land to measurable terms and acted as an agent for bringing it under proprietary control. The book also describes in detail Thoreau's 1846 survey of Walden Pond. By identifying the origins of Walden in—of all places—surveying data, the book re-creates a previously lost supporting manuscript of this American classic.Less
Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most prominent environmental writers, supported himself as a land surveyor for much of his life, parceling land that would be sold off to loggers. This book analyzes this seeming contradiction to show how the best surveyor in Concord combined civil engineering with civil disobedience. Placing Thoreau's surveying in historical context, the book explains the cultural and ideological implications of surveying work in the mid-nineteenth century. It explains the ways in which Thoreau's environmentalist disposition and philosophical convictions asserted themselves, even as he reduced the land to measurable terms and acted as an agent for bringing it under proprietary control. The book also describes in detail Thoreau's 1846 survey of Walden Pond. By identifying the origins of Walden in—of all places—surveying data, the book re-creates a previously lost supporting manuscript of this American classic.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 1987
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158141
- eISBN:
- 9780191673276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158141.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, ...
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Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, since Kafka regarded cognition not as a goal but as a starting point. Kafka's aim was to confront the world of falsehood, denounced in the Zürau aphorisms, by opposing to it a fictional world which, just because it is fictional, rises above the deceits of the physical world and approaches the truth. The spirit of responsibility in which Kafka began work on Das Schloβ is attested by several diary entries from this period in which he speaks of the task facing him. What has saved Kafka's writings from becoming totally hermetic is Zionism. His knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish, especially Hasidic, traditions supplied him with a set of cultural allusions which he worked into Das Schloβ. This chapter examines the four main components of Kafka's Das Schloβ: land-surveyor, castle, officials, and women.Less
Das Schloβ is Franz Kafka's most ambitious attempt to achieve the new artistic purpose that he had formulated in September 1917. His manifesto goes beyond Arthur Schopenhauer, since Kafka regarded cognition not as a goal but as a starting point. Kafka's aim was to confront the world of falsehood, denounced in the Zürau aphorisms, by opposing to it a fictional world which, just because it is fictional, rises above the deceits of the physical world and approaches the truth. The spirit of responsibility in which Kafka began work on Das Schloβ is attested by several diary entries from this period in which he speaks of the task facing him. What has saved Kafka's writings from becoming totally hermetic is Zionism. His knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish, especially Hasidic, traditions supplied him with a set of cultural allusions which he worked into Das Schloβ. This chapter examines the four main components of Kafka's Das Schloβ: land-surveyor, castle, officials, and women.
Patrick Chura
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034935
- eISBN:
- 9780813038278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034935.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's surveying career. To analyze nineteenth-century land surveying is to study Henry Thoreau's primary nonliterary pursuit, an activity that took up a large ...
More
This chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's surveying career. To analyze nineteenth-century land surveying is to study Henry Thoreau's primary nonliterary pursuit, an activity that took up a large portion of his adult life. Thoreau actually made the Walden survey, a three-dimensional pond map that is now one of the most important images in American literary history. The pond survey was a rare type of work, an experiential episode in Thoreau's life the processes of which are now somewhat hard to imagine.Less
This chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's surveying career. To analyze nineteenth-century land surveying is to study Henry Thoreau's primary nonliterary pursuit, an activity that took up a large portion of his adult life. Thoreau actually made the Walden survey, a three-dimensional pond map that is now one of the most important images in American literary history. The pond survey was a rare type of work, an experiential episode in Thoreau's life the processes of which are now somewhat hard to imagine.
Alice Beban
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501753626
- eISBN:
- 9781501753633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501753626.003.0005
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Social and Political Geography
This chapter refers to the volunteer university student land surveyors who formed the front line of the state in the land titling reform. It discusses the prime minister's ability to sidestep local ...
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This chapter refers to the volunteer university student land surveyors who formed the front line of the state in the land titling reform. It discusses the prime minister's ability to sidestep local officials and gain the trust of rural land claimants, which depended on the mobilization of the student volunteers. It also draws on interviews with the volunteer students to argue that they were central to the way the land reform reproduced Hun Sen's personal power. The chapter agues that the unusual power of university volunteers to make decisions and bypass local officials lay in their position as the prime minister's youth. It explains that the student volunteers' power arose from their “in-between-ness” and their category as both youth and soldier since they have the technological sophistication and militarized garb to clarify the political power and threat they embodied.Less
This chapter refers to the volunteer university student land surveyors who formed the front line of the state in the land titling reform. It discusses the prime minister's ability to sidestep local officials and gain the trust of rural land claimants, which depended on the mobilization of the student volunteers. It also draws on interviews with the volunteer students to argue that they were central to the way the land reform reproduced Hun Sen's personal power. The chapter agues that the unusual power of university volunteers to make decisions and bypass local officials lay in their position as the prime minister's youth. It explains that the student volunteers' power arose from their “in-between-ness” and their category as both youth and soldier since they have the technological sophistication and militarized garb to clarify the political power and threat they embodied.
