Read complete books and articles on: Transcendentalism in Literature

Transcendentalism - trănˌsĕndĕnˈtəlĭzəm [Lat.,=overpassing], in literature, philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to 1860. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world. Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, notably that of Immanuel Kant, and from such English authors as Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Its mystical aspects were partly influenced by Indian and Chinese religious teachings. Although transcendentalism was never a rigorously systematic philosophy, it had some basic tenets that were generally shared by its adherents. The beliefs that God is immanent in each person and in nature and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority.

The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as "Nature" (1836), "Self-Reliance," and "The Over-Soul" (both 1841), and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden (1854). The movement began with the occasional meetings of a group of friends in Boston and Concord to discuss philosophy, literature, and religion. Originally calling themselves the Hedge Club (after one of the members), they were later dubbed the Transcendental Club by outsiders because of their discussion of Kant's "transcendental" ideas. Besides Emerson and Thoreau, its most famous members, the club included F. H. Hedge, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and others. For several years much of their writing was published in The Dial (1840–44), a journal edited by Fuller and Emerson. The cooperative community Brook Farm (1841–47) grew out of their ideas on social reform, which also found expression in their many individual actions against slavery. Primarily a movement seeking a new spiritual and intellectual vitality, transcendentalism had a great impact on American literature, not only on the writings of the group's members, but on such diverse authors as Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.

See anthologies ed. by G. W. Cooke (1903, repr. 1971) and P. Miller (1950; 1957, repr. 1981); O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (1876, repr. 1972); J. Porte, Emerson and Thoreau (1966); M. Simon and T. H. Parsons, ed., Transcendentalism and Its Legacy (1966); L. Buell, Literary Transcendentalism (1973).

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12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Transcendentalism in Literature

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

American Literature and the Dream (Chap. 3 "The Transcendental Dream") » Read Now
by Frederic I. Carpenter. 222 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...American literature. But just...expression in nineteenth century Transcendentalism, it has...American literature. PART II...DREAM "TRANSCENDENTALISM, said the...beyond,"...
2.

The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry (Part Two "Transcendentalism") » Read Now
by Joseph Warren Beach. 622 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...the "nature" of transcendentalism was the transient...enough at home in the earlier period...eighteenth-century literature. 2 And even...Carlyle, outstanding in the...
3.

Columbia Literary History of the United States ("The Transcendentalists" begins on p. 364) » Read Now
by Houston A. Baker, Martha Banta, Nina Baym, Sacvan Bercovitch, Emory Elliott, Terence Martin, David Minter, Marjorie Perloff, Daniel B. Shea. 1268 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

For the first time in four decades, there exists an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the literature of the United States, from prehistoric cave narratives to the radical movements of the sixties and the experimentation of the eighties. This comprehensive volume -- one of the century's most...
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For the first time in four decades, there exists an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the literature of the United States, from prehistoric cave narratives to the radical movements of the sixties and the experimentation of the eighties. This comprehensive volume -- one of the century's most important books in American studies -- extensively treats Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, and other long-cherished writers, while also giving considerable attention to recently discovered writers such as Kate Chopin and to literary movements and forms of writing not studied amply in the past. Informed by the most current critical and theoretical ideas, it sets forth a generation's interpretation of the rise of American civilization and culture. The Columbia Literary History of the United States contains essays by today's foremost scholars and critics, overseen by a board of distinguished editors headed by Emory Elliott of Princeton University. These contributors reexamine in contemporary terms traditional subjects such as the importance of Puritanism, Romanticism, and frontier humor in American life and writing, but they also fully explore themes and materials that have only begun to receive deserved attention in the last two decades. Among these are the role of women as writers, readers, and literary subjects and the impact of writers from minority groups, both inside and outside the literary establishment.
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4.

At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature » Read Now
by John Carlos Rowe. 302 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Representative works are interpreted in light of the two great political movements of the nineteenth century: the abolition of slavery and the women's rights movement. By reexamining Emerson, Poe, Melville, Douglass, Walt Whitman, Chopin, and Faulkner and others, Rowe assesses the degree to which...
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Representative works are interpreted in light of the two great political movements of the nineteenth century: the abolition of slavery and the women's rights movement. By reexamining Emerson, Poe, Melville, Douglass, Walt Whitman, Chopin, and Faulkner and others, Rowe assesses the degree to which major writers' attitudes toward race, class, and gender contribute to specific political reforms in nineteenth and twentieth-century American culture.
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5.

Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History » Read Now
by Phyllis Cole. 372 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Mary Moody Emerson has long been a New England legend, the "eccentric Calvinist aunt" of Ralph Waldo Emerson, wearing a death-shroud as her daily garment. This exciting new study, based on the first reading of all her known letters and diaries, reveals a complex human voice and powerful forerunner...
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Mary Moody Emerson has long been a New England legend, the "eccentric Calvinist aunt" of Ralph Waldo Emerson, wearing a death-shroud as her daily garment. This exciting new study, based on the first reading of all her known letters and diaries, reveals a complex human voice and powerful forerunner of American Transcendentalism. From the years of her famous nephew's infancy, in both private and published writings, she celebrated independence, solitude in nature, and inward communion with God. Mary Moody Emerson inherited both resources and constraints from her family, a lineage of Massachusetts ministers who had earlier practiced spiritual awakening and political resistance against England. Cole discovers a previously unexamined Emerson tradition of fervent piety in the ancestors' own writing and Mary's preservation of their memory. She also examines the position of a woman in this patriarchal family. Barred from the pulpit and university by her sex, she also refused marriage to become a reader, writer, and religious seeker. Cole's biography explores this reading and writing as both a woman's vocation and a gift to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Helping to raise her nephews after their father's death, Mary Moody Emerson urged Waldo the college student to seek solitude in nature and become a divine poet. Cole's pioneering study, tracing crucial lines of influence from Mary Emerson's heretofore unknown texts to her nephew's major works, establishes a fresh and vital source for a central American literary tradition.
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6.

The Reception of American Transcendentalism in Russia, in American Studies International » Read Now
by Elvira Osipova. 11 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
7.

The Frontier in American Literature (Chap. IV "The Golden Age of Transcendentalism") » Read Now
by Lucy Lockwood Hazard. 310 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...SOUTHERN FRONTIER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 69...THE FRONTIER ON TRANSCENDENTALISM 147...FRONTIER ELEMENTS IN TRANSCENDENTALISM 149...FIDELITY OF WESTERN LITERATURE 183...
8.

Bridges to Fantasy ("The Apparition of This World: Transcendentalism and the American 'Ghost' Story" begins on p. 90) » Read Now
by George E. Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin, Robert Scholes. 231 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Fantastic Discourse David Clayton 59 The Audience in Childrens Literature Roger Sale 78 The Apparition of This World: Transcendentalism and the American "Ghost" Story G. R...
9.

The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance » Read Now
by Arthur Versluis. 234 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The term "Western esotericism" refers to a wide range of spiritual currents including alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, and Christian theosophy, as well as several practical forms of esotericism like cartomancy, geomancy, necromancy, alchemy, astrology, herbalism, and magic. The early...
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The term "Western esotericism" refers to a wide range of spiritual currents including alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, and Christian theosophy, as well as several practical forms of esotericism like cartomancy, geomancy, necromancy, alchemy, astrology, herbalism, and magic. The early presence of esotericism in North America has not been much studied, and even less so the indebtedness to esotericism of some major American literary figures. In this book, Arthur Versluis breaks new ground, showing that many writers of the so-called American Renaissance drew extensively on and were inspired by Western esoteric currents.
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10.

Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible » Read Now
by Richard A. Grusin. 196 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...issue" of Transcendentalism in New England...American literature and culture...characteristic of Transcendentalism, but "is...evidence in American literature that a...
11.

Separate Spheres No More: Gender Convergence in American Literature, 1830-1930 (Chap. 11 "Gender Valences of Transcendentalism: The Pursuit of Idealism in Elizabeth Oakes-Smith's 'The Sinless Child'") » Read Now
by Monika M. Elbert. 310 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Although they wrote in the same historical milieu as their male counterparts, women writers of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries have generally been "ghettoized" by critics into a separate canonical sphere. These original essays argue in favor of reconciling male and female writers, both...
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Although they wrote in the same historical milieu as their male counterparts, women writers of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries have generally been "ghettoized" by critics into a separate canonical sphere. These original essays argue in favor of reconciling male and female writers, both historically and in the context of classroom teaching.
While some of the essays pair up female and male authors who write in a similar style or with similar concerns, others address social issues shared by both men and women, including class tensions, economic problems, and the Civil War experience. Rather than privileging particular genres or certain well-known writers, the contributors examine writings ranging from novels and poetry to autobiography, utopian fiction, and essays. And they consider familiar figures like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson alongside such lesser-known writers as Melusina Fay Peirce, Susie King Taylor, and Mary Gove Nichols.
Each essay revises the binary notions that have been ascribed to males and females, such as public and private, rational and intuitive, political and domestic, violent and passive. Although they do not deny the existence of separate spheres, the contributors show the boundary between them to be much more blurred than has been assumed until now.
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12.

A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1850s in America ("Transcendentalism" begins on p. 381) » Read Now
by Robert L. Gale. 479 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The 1850s were a particularly fruitful and eventful period in American history, a time of unrest and preparation for change. This reference work provides a thorough record of the cultural happenings in America during that period. The volume is divided into several sections. It begins with a...
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The 1850s were a particularly fruitful and eventful period in American history, a time of unrest and preparation for change. This reference work provides a thorough record of the cultural happenings in America during that period. The volume is divided into several sections. It begins with a chronology that presents the events of the 1850s in capsule form year by year. A list of entries follows. The encyclopedia that comes after the list of entries contains brief, alphabetically arranged articles for performers, military personnel, theologians, composers, critics, educators, explorers, historians, industrialists, inventors, authors, artists, physicians, scientists, sculptors, and numerous events and creative works. A bibliography, divided into topical sections, directs the reader to the best sources of additional information. An appendix lists the biographical entries according to professional categories, and a detailed index adds to the usefulness of the volume.
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