New England as Poetic Landscape: Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost

Deriving their literary inspiration from New England, Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost indeed turn the Northeast Corner into a poetic landscape. The natural, traditional countryside and habits of New England provided rich stimulus for their writing. Indeed, the rural area formed the focus of their individualism, abhorrence for state repression and early form of ecological awareness. This comparative study not only seeks to underline the affinities between these two hard-headed Yankees; it also aims to examine the individual nuances of each poet viewed against their common environmental and thematic background. By means of intensive text analyses, the real extent of Thoreau’s influence on Frost is revealed and the characteristic profile of each author is brought into a new light.