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American transcendentalism : a history / Philip F. Gura.

by Gura, Philip F., 1950-

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Hill and Wang, 2007.

Transcendentalism (New England)

Table of contents only

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

9780809034772 (hardcover : alk. paper)

0809034778 (hardcover : alk. paper)

xv, 365 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [307]-343) and index.

Introduction: Locating the "Like-Minded" -- 1. Searching the Scriptures -- 2. Reinvigorating a Faith -- 3. Transcendentalism Emergent -- 4. Religious Combustion -- 5. Centripetal Forces and Centrifugal Motion -- 6. Heaven on Earth -- 7. Varieties of Transcendentalism -- 8. Self and Society -- 9. The Inward Turn -- 10. Free Religion and the Dream of a Common Humanity -- 11. Toward the Genteel Tradition.

"A comprehensive history of the movement, American Transcendentalism brilliantly captures the complexity of one of the nation's most compelling intellectual coteries. Commonly associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the American Transcendentalists were a varied group of nineteenth-century public intellectuals who believed that the United States had not yet realized its democratic promise. Orestes Brownson worked to improve the plight of the laborer. Bronson Alcott experimented with new educational methods. George Ripley embraced European socialism. Margaret Fuller championed the rights of women. Theodore Parker became a champion of abolition." "Philip F. Gura traces the Transcendentalists' activities to their religious and philosophical roots in Europe. He describes the movement's continuing fluidity, some figures devoted to an ethic of self-culture, others to a selfless devotion to the common good. He follows the Transcendentalists through the 1850s, when they united in opposition to slavery, and then into the 1880s, as second-generation members failed to accommodate the philosophical currents that defined their age. Relegated to relative obscurity as their once-compelling arguments for social reform fell on deaf ears, these Transcendentalists saw a simplistic version of Emerson's imperial self enshrined as the national faith."--BOOK JACKET.

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