A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: An American

Abstract

Travel-literature, compared to other forms of literature happens to be neglected by literary critics. A systematic study of the famous travelogues will, no doubt, reveal a few patterns, which could be very interesting. Travelogues may be broadly classified into two categories: one, those written by natives and two, those by foreigners. Each of these categories can yield very interesting types of experience and narrative methods. Travelogues written by foreigners are generally known for their depiction of exotic life all the more exaggerated by the wide gap between two cultures. But those written by native writers are generally known for their search for details of human life belonging to the same culture, which is known to the authors at least partially. Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers happens to be a travelogue written by a Native American about his travel in America. Thoreau undertook the journey not by way of merry-making, but with an intention of educating himself, just in line with Francis Bacon’s observation that travel is part of education. He made the journey in the autumn of 1839, which actually occupied only ten days, but he compressed it into only seven days by giving it a diary structure. The journey was prompted by Thoreau’s intention of escaping from the utilitarianism and materialism of the so-called civilization of America into the soothing company of Nature, thereby achieving some kind of spiritual enlightenment.