An overview of American literature from 1800 through 1860 that examines the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the time, and provides information on romanticism, transcendentalism, American idealism, social reform movements, specific authors, and other related topics.
A series of handbooks provides strategies for studying and writing about frequently taught literary topics, with each volume offering study guides, background information, suggestions for areas of research, and a list of secondary sources.
A comprehensive history of American transcendentalism which originated with a number of nineteenth-century intellectuals including Ralph Waldo Emerson, and examines their philosophical and religious roots in Europe and opposition to slavery.
Barbara L. Packer's long essay "The Transcendentalists" is widely acknowledged by scholars of nineteenth-century American literary history as the best-written, most comprehensive treatment to date of Transcendentalism. Previously existing only as part of a volume in the magisterial Cambridge History of American Literature, it will now be available for the first time in a stand-alone edition. Packer presents Transcendentalism as a living movement, evolving out of such origins as New England Unitarianism and finding early inspiration in European Romanticism. Transcendentalism changed religious beliefs, philosophical ideas, literary styles, and political allegiances. In addition, it was a social movement whose members collaborated on projects and formed close personal ties. Transcendentalism contains vigorous thought and expression throughout, says Packer; only a study of the entire movement can explain its continuing sway over American thought. Through fresh readings of both the essential Transcendentalist texts and the best current scholarship, Packer conveys the movement's genuine expectations that its radical spirituality not only would lead to personal perfection but also would inspire solutions to such national problems as slavery and disfranchisement. Here is Transcendentalism in whole, with Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller restored to their place alongside such contemporaries as Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, Jones Very, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Orestes Brownson, and Frederick Henry Hedge.
Essay from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 9, International Islamic University, course: American Transcendentalists, language: English, abstract: This essay provides insight into two important social ideals in the 19th century - the american transcendentalism and, by comparison, the english romanticism. The fokus will hereby be on the former, while the latter will provide a source of delineating characteristics established through contrasting both against each other. To fully enclose the concept of american transcendentalism, the essay will examine both the religious and philosophical as well as the literary and general cultural aspects of the movement.
"Comparative study in transatlantic Romanticism that traces the links between German idealism, British Romanticism (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle), and American Transcendentalism. Focuses on Emerson's development and use of the concept of intuitive Reason, which became the intellectual and emotional foundation of American Transcendentalism"--Provided by publisher.
Transcendentalism was the name given to the New England movement of the 1830s and 1840s that brought together Romanticism in literature and social reform in politics. Its partisans argued for the rights of women, the abolition of slavery, and, in some cases, the socialization of labor and equal distribution of profits. They were America’s first avant-garde. This volume presents substantial selections from the writings of key American Transcendentalists, such as George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, and Bronson Alcott. Included are sermons and diary entries, essays on labor, religion, education, and literature, on German metaphysics and Coleridge’s philosophy of mind. Many are expressive of the movement’s over-arching project: to define the innermost meanings of democracy--the nature of man, his place in the world, and his relation to the divine. First published in 1966, the book has been updated and expanded for this edition.