American Transcendentalism: A HistoryMacmillan, 2007 M11 13 - 365 pages The First Comprehensive History of Transcendentalism American Transcendentalism is a comprehensive narrative history of America's first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and following the America Civil War. Philip F. Gura masterfully traces their intellectual genealogy to transatlantic religious and philosophical ideas, illustrating how these informed the fierce local theological debates that, so often first in Massachusetts and eventually throughout America, gave rise to practical, personal, and quixotic attempts to improve, even perfect the world. The transcendentalists would painfully bifurcate over what could be attained and how, one half epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson and stressing self-reliant individualism, the other by Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, emphasizing commitment to the larger social good. By the 1850s, the uniquely American problem of slavery dissolved differences as transcendentalists turned ever more exclusively to abolition. Along with their early inheritance from European Romanticism, America's transcendentalists abandoned their interest in general humanitarian reform. By war's end, transcendentalism had become identified exclusively with Emersonian self-reliance, congruent with the national ethos of political liberalism and market capitalism. |
Contents
Introduction Locating the LikeMinded | 3 |
1 Searching the Scriptures | 21 |
2 Reinvigorating a Faith | 46 |
3 Transcendentalism Emergent | 69 |
4 Religious Combustion | 98 |
5 Centripetal Forces and Centrifugal Motion | 123 |
6 Heaven on Earth | 150 |
7 Varieties of Transcendentalism | 180 |
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Alcott American Andrews Norton antislavery Bartol believed biblical Boston Brook Farm Brown Cambridge Caroline Healey Charles Christ Christian Examiner church Concord continued Convers Francis Cousin criticism culture Dial Divinity School doctrine early Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Elizabeth Peabody Emer England essays example faith Follen Fourier Frederic Henry Hedge George Ripley German Harvard human Ibid Idealism Idealist ideas individual intellectual James Freeman Clarke Joel Myerson journal Judd labor language lecture Letters liberal man’s Margaret Fuller Massachusetts mind minister miracles moral moved movement nature Octavius Brooks Frothingham Orestes Brownson philosophy preached principles published radical Ralph Waldo Emerson reform religion religious Review Ripley’s Roberts Brothers Samuel scholars scriptural sermon slave slavery social Society soul spiritual Stuart Theodore Parker theology Thoreau thought tion Tran Transcendentalism Transcendentalists translation truth Unitarian University Press views vols Wasson Wette William Ellery Channing William Henry Channing women words writings wrote York young