ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Henry David Thoreau stayed for two years at Walden Pond (1845–47), where he lived in a cabin of his own making and survived off the land. Midway in his Walden sojourn Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax.

Detailed explanation-2: -Emerson, however, didn’t try to find the one ideal friend in one person, he found different aspects of that ideal friendship in many people. So Thoreau was just one of the many friends that Emerson had; although, certainly later in life, he kept referring to Thoreau as his best friend.

Detailed explanation-3: -Walden, in full Walden; or, Life in the Woods, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47).

Detailed explanation-4: -Emerson tried to bring more natural processes to the society while Thoreau tried to change the way the human society existed. Emerson concentrated on the inner world and people’s beliefs and perspectives whereas Thoreau saw other aspects as important.

Detailed explanation-5: -Thoreau’s importance as a philosophical writer was little appreciated during his lifetime, but his two most noted works, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) and “Civil Disobedience” (1849), gradually developed a following, and by the latter half of the 20th century, had become classic texts in American thought.