Thoreau’s Surreal Imagery of Homemaking and Mumford’s Myth of the Machine
Thoreau’s Surreal Imagery of Homemaking and Mumford’s Myth of the Machine

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses Henry David Thoreau’s domestic spatial imagery in Walden, in terms of Bachelard’s poetics of space, as a set of angles, nests, crusts, and shells. The analysis identifies uncanny similarities between Thoreau’s imagery and descriptions of megamachines, as defined by Lewis Mumford. The descriptions of megamachines come from a variety of more recent sources from the 20th century, which suggests that the seemingly unrelated, technocratic texts have been inspired by Thoreau.

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