Thoreau's passion (Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson)

This dissertation is a study of Thoreau's posthumous reception or "canonization," using that term in its religious sense. It is mostly a reading of Emerson's eulogy for Thoreau in terms of the social psychology of shame, on the one hand, and impersonality, on the other. My discussion of the former revolves around Thoreau's affectionate homosocial and homoerotic relations: I offer a new way of thinking about his sexuality in its historical context that engages with important strands of queer theory. My discussion of the latter is related to Thoreau's production as something like a secular "saint." I argue that Emerson's canonization of "that terrible Thoreau," as he famously calls him, entails the sacrifice of Thoreau's personal relations, indeed his personhood.; The first chapter argues that shame is a consequence of personal identity and mediates face-to-face relations between persons. I use this theory to produce an alternative account of gazing or "cruising" between men without recourse to the modern epistemology of the closet. The second chapter considers the emergence of the impersonal in Emerson's eulogy as something like an unmediated face-to-face, a direct encounter with God or a heroic human, which is epitomized by the shamelessness of "that terrible Thoreau." This figure both awes and embarrasses Emerson, whose ambivalence represents a person's ambivalence toward the sacred while Thoreau's production as both impersonal and a "faulty" person represents the ambivalence of the sacred. The third chapter compares Emerson's adolescent "eye-fascination" with Martin Gay to his later representation of Thoreau's "terrible eyes," arguing that what is missing from the latter is the sense that Thoreau was a shy person. The final chapter considers the ramifications for Thoreau's posthumous reception of sacrificing his personal, especially his affectionate homosocial, relations. It specifies Emerson and Thoreau's respective roles in what I call the "myth of Concord." Emerson, I argue, produces himself as the spokesperson for the community while Thoreau is produced as its scapegoat.