The Animal Soundscape of Thoreau’s Walden

Abstract

This essay singles out the peculiar animal soundscape that Thoreau sketches in Walden, especially in the following chapters: “Higher Laws”, “Brute Neighbors” and “Winter Animals”. In them, in fact, the ‘I’ describes and recollects the voices of the various animals at Walden Pond. In order to make sense of this variegated and multifarious soundscape, Thoreau resorts to many possible exegetic tools, among which there is literature.

Keywords

• thoreau
• walden
• animal studies
• soundscape studies.