《瓦尔登湖》：现代精神危机的一剂解药 Walden: Medicine for Modern Spiritual Crisis开题报告

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1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

with the rapid development of economy and technology, as well as the endless emergence of new types of media, people’s life is being filled up and time is being wasted. the truth is that people seem to be difficult to hold on their positions in the flood of explosive information and goods, and finally get lost in consumerism and materialism. it’s getting harder for people to achieve tranquility or retain an ideal spiritual world. thus, people are getting further involved in spiritual hollowness and belief crisis. meanwhile, this situation might have already led individuals or even the whole society to the absence of moral bottom line.

to make things worse, most of people don't seem to have realized that they are stepping farther away from their soul , even have forgotten that there is still a spiritual land waiting for them, or simply rely themselves mentally on junk information or blind consumption. even the only remaining spiritual oasis has being invaded by consumerism and materialism, which were advocated by profit-seeking corporations. as time goes by, people will lose their own values and sense of judgment and be trapped in the spiritual wasteland.

it’s human nature that people are motivated more spiritually than by the outside stuff. a fundamental alteration will never take place if there are only rigidity of institution and law to effect the public. therefore, an effective remedy, namely, a spiritual oasis should be found for people. the nineteenth century american transcendentalism, which addresses intelligence, spiritual world and moral, advocates individual feelings and experiences rather than mere ration, might be able to blow fresh air to the copper stink blundering society. and among those transcendentalist figures, henry david thoreau, the practitioner of transcendentalism, by his two years of experimental life by walden lake, had presented people a new possibility ——a novel life notion, a simple life style which is on the contrary to the colorfulmodern material life. it is all about recovering one's original simplicity and backing to the nature.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

This paper mainly deals with how to remit modern spiritual crisis by studying Walden—-the master work of the nineteenth century American romantic writer Henry David Thoreau. In order to study the topic more thoroughly, the paper will involve issues about the current situation of spiritual and belief crisis, the impact that consumerism poses on people, and people’s happiness and moral values, all of which are able to reflect current social problems. In addition, the paper deals with the principal part of society—- the public, about the study of psychology of the masses, including how the mass influence others or being influenced and driven. The references and data will be gathered and sorted from literature works, treaties, surveys and current news.

The study about the work Walden itself will combine with the life of Thoreau, his thoughts and other major works, for instance, The Civil Disobedience. It will also discuss American transcendentalism, including its features and its great representative Ralph Waldo Emerson. Because the concept of transcendentalism will help to illustrate the ideas of Walden and Thoreau better. The differences and similarities of social background between that time and present is also worth studying. The main way to get resources and references will be reading articles and treaties, literature works, and some reference books.

3. 研究计划与安排

before 1st january : settlement of the title

before 1st march: submission of the outline

before 15th april : submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1] cain,william e.thoreau in the 21 st century.[j].society,2018(10):452-459.

[2] can,yekta saidarnrich,bertersoy,cem.stress detection in daily life scenarios using smart phones and wearable sensors: a survey[j].journal of biomedical informatics,2019.

[3] emerson, ralph waldo.nature.[m]. signet classics, 2006.