The Handbook of American Romanticism presents a comprehensive survey of the various schools, authors, and works that constituted antebellum literature in the United States. The volume is designed to feature a selection of representative case studies and to assess them within two complementary frameworks: the most relevant historical, political, and institutional contexts of the antebellum decades and the consequent (re-)appropriations of the Romantic period by academic literary criticism in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressions The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation’s history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religion in America has transformed over the years, explore its many expressions and meanings, and consider religion’s central role in American life. Emphasizing the integration of religion into broader cultural and historical themes, this wide-ranging volume explores the operation of religion in eras of historical change, the diversity of religious experiences, and religion’s intersections with American cultural, political, social, racial, gender, and intellectual history. Each chronologically-organized chapter focuses on a specific period or event, such as the interactions between Moravian and Indigenous communities, the origins of African-American religious institutions, Mormon settlement in Utah, social reform movements during the twentieth century, the growth of ethnic religious communities, and the rise of the Religious Right. An innovative historical genealogy of American religious traditions, the Companion: Highlights broader historical themes using clear and compelling narrative Helps teachers expose their students to the significance and variety of America’s religious past Explains new and revisionist interpretations of American religious history Surveys current and emerging historiographical trends Traces historical themes to contemporary issues surrounding civil rights and social justice movements, modern capitalism, and debates over religious liberties Making the lessons of American religious history relevant to a broad range of readers, The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History is the perfect book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in American history courses, and a valuable resource for graduate students and scholars wanting to keep pace with current historiographical trends and recent developments in the field.
The Handbook of American Romanticism presents a comprehensive survey of the various schools, authors, and works that constituted antebellum literature in the United States. The volume is designed to feature a selection of representative case studies and to assess them within two complementary frameworks: the most relevant historical, political, and institutional contexts of the antebellum decades and the consequent (re-)appropriations of the Romantic period by academic literary criticism in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
After a century of Rationalist scepticism and political upheaval, the nineteenth century awakened to a fierce battle between the forces of secularization and the crusaders of a Christian revival. From this battlefield arose an art movement that would become the torchbearer of a new religious art: Nazarenism. From its inception in the Lukasbund of 1809, this art was controversial. It nonetheless succeeded in becoming a lingua franca in religious circles throughout Europe, America, and the world at large. This is the first major study of the evolution, structure, and conceptual complexity of this archetypically nineteenth-century language of belief. The Nazarene quest for a modern religious idiom evolved around a return to pre-modern forms of biblical exegesis and the adaptation of traditional systems of iconography. Reflecting the era's historicist sensibility as much as the general revival of orthodoxy in the various Christian denominations, the Nazarenes responded with great acumen to pressing contemporary concerns. Consequently, the artists did not simply revive Christian iconography, but rather reconceptualized what it could do and say. This creativity and flexibility enabled them to intervene forcefully in key debates of post-revolutionary European society: the function of eroticism in a Christian life, the role of women and the social question, devotional practice and the nature of the Church, childhood education and bible study, and the burning issue of anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism. What makes Nazarene art essentially Romantic is the meditation on the conditions of art-making inscribed into their appropriation and reinvention of artistic tradition. Far from being a reactionary move, this self-reflexivity expresses the modernity of Nazarene art. This study explores Nazarenism in a series of detailed excavations of central works in the Nazarene corpus produced between 1808 and the 1860s. The result is a book about the possibility of religious meanin
Contrary to the popular perception that C.S. Lewis was merely a religious writer, there is a good case to be made for Lewis being one of the major British writers of the twentieth century if we look at him as a prime member of a resurgent Romantic movement after the Second World War. Much has been written on Lewis’s thoughts on joy, a central aspect of his Romanticism. However, Lewis was at the same time a rationalist, and managed to merge his Rationalism with his Romanticism in a unique and original manner. And his Romanticism likewise was complex and owed much to both George MacDonald and, through the medium of MacDonald’s thought, to the Romanticism of William Wordsworth. This study traces the aspects of Lewis’s romantic thought as it is drawn from MacDonald, Wordsworth and other influences, and traces how, beyond his fascination with joy, Lewis constructed a consistent romantic vision that allowed for a balance with reason and stood in contradiction to the literary movements of his time.
American Romanticism and the Popularization of Literary Education focuses on three Romantic educational genres and their institutional and media contexts: the conversation, literary journalism, and the public lecture. The genres discussed in this book illustrate the ways in which the Transcendentalists engaged nineteenthcentury media and educational institutions in order to fully realize their projects. The book also charts the development from the semi-public conversational platforms such as Alcott’s Temple School and Fuller’s conversations for women in the 1830s to the increasingly public periodical culture and lecture platforms of the 1840s and the early 1850s. This expansion caused a reconsideration of the meaning and function of Romanticism.
This is a study of religious thought and life in America in the generation before the Civil War. It focuses on Nevin and Schaff, who pioneered in America the theological reinterpretations stimulated by German idealism in philosophy and the new theories of historical development. They were also spokesmen of the romantic interest in Christian traditions, community, and sacraments and in this interest opposed the antihistorical individualism predominant in American religion. Charles Hodge, Orestes Brownson, Horace Bushnell, R. J. Wilberforce, and the American Lutherans all debated with them. Nevin and Schaff were the chief nineteenth-century American prophets of the contemporary ecumenical movement.
The Romantic Foundations of the American Renaissance illuminates the process by which the cultural legacy of European Romanticism was assimilated by and transformed in the literature of mid-nineteenth-century America. Leon Chai traces the development various governing concepts or tendencies from their genesis in British, French, and German Romantic traditions through their subsequent appropriation by such American writers as Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Among the topics he addresses are the shift from allegory to symbolism; selected trends in Romantic science; the secularization of religion; the emergence of a historical consciousness and a philosophy of history; pantheism; the relation of subjectivity to objectivity in Romantic philosophy; and Romantic poets.
This text identifies the indigenous roots of American liberal theology and uncovers a wider, longer-running tradition than has been thought. Taking a narrative approach the text provides a biographical reading of important religious thinkers of the time.
Romanticism was always culturally diverse. Though English-language anthologies have previously tended to see Romanticism as predominantly British, the term itself actually originated in Germany, where it became the banner of a Europe-wide movement involving the profound intellectual and aesthetic changes which we now associate with modernity. This anthology is the first to place British Romanticism within a comprehensive and multi-lingual European context, showing how ideas and writers interconnected across national and linguistic boundaries. By reprinting everything in the original languages, together with an English translation of all non-English material in parallel on the opposite page, it offers a new intellectual map of Romanticism. Material is thematically arranged as follows: - Art & Aesthetics - The Self - History - Language - Hermeneutics & Theology - Nature - The Exotic - Science While focusing on European texts, the inclusion of essays on their North American and Japanese reception means that Romanticism can be seen as a global phenomenon, influencing a surprising number of the ways in which the modern world sees itself.
