vagabonde et « extravagante » de Thoreau trouve ainsi dans les cartes un allié inattendu qui permet une redistribution polémique des spatialités et la mise en place d’un nouveau régime de visibilité. Henry David Thoreau’s legacy is not only literary but cartographic, including numerous maps long neglected by critics– from the plans he drafted as a professional surveyor, to the ancient charts he copied in the library at Harvard University. The Surveyor and the Saunterer examines the role that these maps played in Thoreau’s work as a writer. While he was aware of their geographic limitations, and the ideological bias involved in map-making, Thoreau was nevertheless drawn to them as a unique clarification tool, capable of revealing phenomena that would otherwise remain invisible. In his writings on nature, as well as in his more political essays, Thoreau’s “extravagant” and sauntering mind finds an unexpected ally in cartography, allowing him to conduct a controversial redistribution of spatiality, and explore a new system of visibility. |