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As the culture of commercial capitalism came to dominate nineteenth-century New England, it changed people's ideas about how the world functioned, the nature of their work, their relationships to one another, and even the way they conceived of themselves as separate individuals. Drawing on the work of the last twenty years in New England social history, Mary Cayton argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's work and career, when seen in the context of the momentous changes in the culture and economics of the region, reveal many of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the new capitalist social order. In exploring the genesis of liberal humanism as a calling in the United States, this case study implicitly poses questions about its assumptions, its aspirations, and its failings. Cayton traces the ways in which the social circumstances of Emerson's Boston gave rise to his philosophy of natural organicism, his search for an appropriate definition of the intellectual's role within society, and his exhortations to individuals to distrust the norms and practices of the mass culture that was emerging. She addresses the historical context of Emerson's emergence as a writer and orator and undertakes to describe the Federalism and Unitarianism in which Emerson grew up, explaining why he eventually rejected them in favor of romantic transcendentalism. Cayton demonstrates how Emerson's thought was affected by the social pressures and ideological constructs that launched the new cultural discourse of individualism. A work of intellectual history and American studies, this book explores through Emerson's example the ways in which intellectuals both make their cultures and are made by them.
A timely and engrossing critique of the New Americanists
The eighty-one manuscript letters, drafts, notes, and fragments comprising the correspondence between Sarah Helen Whitman (Poe’s onetime fiancée) and Julia Deane Freeman span a tumultuous time in American history, 1856–1863. A veritable Who’s Who in literature during the period, the women’s letters reference works and writers such as Emerson, Hawthorne, Poe, Walt Whitman, and scores of women writers such as Margaret Fuller, Paulina Davis, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Susan Warner, Julia Ward Howe, and E.D.E.N. Southworth, and their works. Comparing prominent publishers, critiquing famous journalists, discussing current events—including the impending Civil War, slavery, the spread of Spiritualism, the rising consciousness of women’s rights, and the prevailing tastes in theater, music, and art—the correspondence exposes an untapped vein of historical riches. Yet the letters offer more than a compendium of literary works and historical events. When viewed through the lens of contemporary critical theories, the letters shimmer with significance. The Whitman/Freeman correspondence witnesses the growth of a profound friendship, the genesis and development of which parallels, to a startling degree, Whitman’s affair with Poe. The letters additionally support, and in some instances, complicate, contemporary scholars’ perspectives regarding issues related to women. While scholars have rescued many nineteenth-century women writers from unmerited obscurity, Whitman and Freeman recount in “real time” their assessment of contemporary women writers. A well-informed abolitionist who bequeathed a portion of her estate to a black orphanage, Whitman has much to say about political viewpoints, both national and local, during a time that denied women the right to vote. How Whitman negotiates society’s strictures and her iconoclastic self-expression deserves careful study in itself. Well crafted and thoroughly engaging, the previously unpublished correspondence between Sarah Helen Whitman and Julia Deane Freeman provides scholars of numerous disciplines with fresh and fascinating material.
This critical biography traces the spiritual, psychological, and intellectual growth of one of America's foremost oracles and prophets, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). Beginning with his undergraduate career at Harvard and spanning the range of his adult life, the book examines the complex, often painful emotional journey inward that would eventually transform Emerson from an average Unitarian minister into one of the century's most formidable intellectual figures. By connecting Emerson's inner life with his outer life, Len Gougeon illustrates a virtually seamless relationship between Emerson's Transcendental philosophy and his later career as a social reformer, a rebel who sought to "unsettle all things" in an effort to redeem his society. In tracing the path of Emerson's evolution, Gougeon makes use of insights by Joseph Campbell, Erich Neumann, Mircea Eliade, and N. O. Brown. Like Emerson, all of these thinkers directly experienced the fragmentation and dehumanization of the Western world, and all were influenced both directly and indirectly by Emerson and his philosophy. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how Emerson's philosophy would become a major force of liberal reformation in American society, a force whose impact is still felt today.
"Effects of Emerson's professional guidance as mentor, marketer, editor, and promoter for 8 young writers: Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Christopher Cranch, Samuel Gray Ward, Jones Very, Ellery Channing, Charles Newcomb, and Ellen Sturgis Hooper"--
Sklansky traces a shift in American social thought as the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Amid the widening class divide, nineteenth-century social theorists devised a new science of American society that reconceived freedom in terms of psychic self-expression instead of economic self-interest, and they redefined democracy in terms of cultural kinship rather than social compact.
Much has been written about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s fundamental contributions to American literature and culture as an essayist, philosopher, lecturer, and poet. But despite wide agreement among literary and rhetorical scholars on the need for further study of Emerson as a rhetorical theorist, little has been published on the subject. This book fills that gap, reenvisioning Emerson’s work through his significant engagement with rhetorical theory in the course of his career and providing a more profound understanding of Emerson’s influence on American ideology. Moving beyond dominant literary critical thinking, Thompson argues that for Emerson, rhetoric was both imaginative and nonsystematic. This book covers the influences of rhetoricians from a range of periods on Emerson’s model of rhetoric. Drawing on Emerson’s manuscript notes, journal entries, and some of his rarely discussed essays and lectures as well as his more famous works, the author bridges the divide between literary and rhetorical studies, expanding our understanding of this iconic nineteenth-century man of letters.
This book is Stanley Cavell’s definitive expression on Emerson. Over the past thirty years, Cavell has demonstrated that he is the most emphatic and provocative philosophical critic of Emerson that America has yet known. The sustained effort of that labor is drawn together here for the first time into a single volume, which also contains two previously unpublished essays and an introduction by Cavell that reflects on this book and the history of its emergence. Students and scholars working in philosophy, literature, American studies, history, film studies, and political theory can now more easily access Cavell’s luminous and enduring work on Emerson. Such engagement should be further complemented by extensive indices and annotations. If we are still in doubt whether America has expressed itself philosophically, there is perhaps no better space for inquiry than reading Cavell reading Emerson.
This comprehensive portrait of Emerson draws from newly available material, including correspondence between the Emerson brothers.
In 1832, Emerson made his famous decision to pursue wholeness in his life and in his writing. The Emerson Museum shows how this undertaking transformed American literary practice by turning the legacy of European romanticism into a writing project answerable to American urgencies.