Emerson's Emergence

Emerson's Emergence PDF Author: Mary Kupiec Cayton
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469621428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
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.

Emerson's Emergence

Emerson's Emergence PDF Author: Mary Kupiec Cayton
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469621428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Transcendental Resistance

Transcendental Resistance PDF Author: Johannes Voelz
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1584659378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A timely and engrossing critique of the New Americanists

The Correspondence of Sarah Helen Whitman and Julia Deane Freeman

The Correspondence of Sarah Helen Whitman and Julia Deane Freeman PDF Author: Catherine Kunce
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611494397
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
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.

Emerson and Eros

Emerson and Eros PDF Author: Len Gougeon
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
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.

Emerson's Protégés

Emerson's Protégés PDF Author: David Dowling
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300197446
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
"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"--

The Soul's Economy

The Soul's Economy PDF Author: Jeffrey P. Sklansky
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807853986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
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.

Emerson and the History of Rhetoric

Emerson and the History of Rhetoric PDF Author: Roger Thompson
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809336138
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
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.

Emerson

Emerson PDF Author: Robert D. Richardson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520206894
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
This comprehensive portrait of Emerson draws from newly available material, including correspondence between the Emerson brothers.

The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Joel Porte (ed)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521499460
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A collection of newly commissioned essays provides a critical introduction to pastor and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Spiritual Emerson

The Spiritual Emerson PDF Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807077191
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) is known best in the twenty-first century as a literary innovator and early architect of American intellectual culture, but his writings still offer spiritual sustenance to the thoughtful reader. The Spiritual Emerson, originally published on the two hundredth anniversary of the writer's birth, brings together the writings that articulate Emerson's spiritual vision and promise the greatest relevance to today's reader.