Johnson locates a more ecologically minded Thoreau only when the naturalist can move beyond Emersonian metaphor in his later work, and therefore initiate (along with Susan Fennimore Cooper) an empirical "counteraesthetics" to the dominant paradigm in American environmental aesthetics codified in Emerson's line from his 1836 Nature: "The world is emblematic. ... In doing so, critics continue to mistake the fact that Emerson offers in his later work and its focus on metonymy something of a "counteraesthetics" to his own earlier conception of metaphorical nature. (11) In this later work that...

• Word Count: 9971
• Approx Pages: 40
• Grade Level: Undergraduate