The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Engl

Description: The American Transcendentalists by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lawrence Buell An accessible anthology of important writings by members of the American Transcendentalist movement features works by all of the major literary figures, including Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The best Transcendentalism reader on the market, edited and introduced by a preeminent scholar of American Transcendentalism and environmental/nature writing.Transcendentalism was the first major intellectual movement in U.S. history, championing the inherent divinity of each individual, as well as the value of collective social action. In the mid-nineteenth century, the movement took off, changing how Americans thought about religion, literature, the natural world, class distinctions, the role of women, and the existence of slavery.Edited by the eminent scholar Lawrence Buell, this comprehensive anthology contains the essential writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and their fellow visionaries. There are also reflections on the movement by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This remarkable volume introduces the radical innovations of a brilliant group of thinkers whose impact on religious thought, social reform, philosophy, and literature continues to reverberate in the twenty-first century. Author Biography Lawrence Buell is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University. He is the award-winning author of many notable books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination, and Emerson. Review "Buell is probably the most distinguished living authority on Emersons literary circle, the American Transcendentalists."–Daniel W. Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History emeritus, Oxford University Review Quote "Buell is probably the most distinguished living authority on Emersons literary circle, the American Transcendentalists." Daniel W. Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History emeritus, Oxford University Excerpt from Book 1. Mary Moody Emerson Letters to a Future Transcendentalist (1817--51) Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) was Ralph Waldo Emersons aunt and first mentor. She was a striking figure in her own right. She impressed all who came into contact with her--which included most of the Transcendentalist circle--with her unsystematic brilliance, her spiritual intensity, her biting wit, and her eccentric force. The younger sister of Emersons father, she became the family matriarch after his early death. She had high hopes that Ralph Waldo would distinguish himself in the ministerial career that the men in his family had pursued for six unbroken generations back to colonial times. She wound up driving him toward Transcendentalism even as she tried to warn him away. The many letters she sent him over more than forty years display her unique talents. They led Emerson, astonishingly, to praise her as one of the great prose stylists of her day, although she wrote almost nothing for publication. Both of them relished their correspondence. Many of Mary Emersons turns of thought and even her turns of phrase resurface in his own later essays. They took a similar delight in the natural world, in ranging widely through Asian as well as western thought and literature, in moral and spiritual inquiry, and in a headlong free-associative style of thought and expression. Here are a dozen passages from Marys letters to her nephew, starting with a comically extravagant letter of congratulation upon the start of his freshman year at Harvard at the tender but then typical age of fourteen. Often she responds pointedly to his own letters and compositions, from a juvenile proposal for "reform" of drama through high-minded literary criticism (item 4) to major work like his 1838 Divinity School Address (item 11), which took her aback, as it did most of his elders. Marys oblique reflection on the controversy, her fable of Urah, may have suggested Emersons poem "Uriel" (see Section V-B below). Too conservative to approve of Waldos Transcendental turn, Mary Emerson nonetheless helped set him--and the movement--on the way. But no matter how famous he became, she never ceased to admonish him when she thought he deserved it. Her charge that wealth was a topic unworthy of him (item 12) is a prime example. SOURCE: The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, ed. Nancy Craig Simmons. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. Spelling as well as punctuation of these letters have been partially normalized for the sake of readability. (1) What dull Prosaic Muse would venture from the humble dell of an unlettered district, to address a son of Harvard? . . . In that great Assembly, where human nature is purified from its native dross & ignorance, may the name of my dear Waldo be inrolled. [NOVEMBER 4, 1817] (2) The spirits of inspiration are abroad tonight. I have rode only to go out & see the wonderous aspect of nature. . . . We love nature--to individuate ourselves in her wildest moods; to partake of her extension, & glow with her colors & fly on her winds; but we better love to cast her off and rely on that only which is imperishable. Shakespeare has admirably described the universal influence of the infinite Spirit by that of the sun, whose light & warmth brings to maturity the healthiest plant & the most poisonous--corrupts the corruptible, & nourishes the splendid tribe of flora with the same beam. What an illustration--and of what a truth! . . . Right and wrong have had claims prior to all rites--immutable & eternal in their nature . . . [JANUARY 18, 1821] (3) I have been fortunate this week to find a Visitor here from India, well versed in its literature & theology. He showed us some fine representations of the incarnation of Vishnoo. They are much akin to Grecian fable--and from his representation I believe the incarnations to be much like the doctrine of transmigration. At bottom of the histories of the incarnations is often the doctrine of the universal presence & agency of One God. . . . As to books, Ive been only where you have, sometimes in Merlins cave and Homers shades, sometimes. Was delighted with the speech made by Ulysses to the shade of his mother. [Alexander] Popes--is it better in original? Have been surprised to find in the 10th book of [the Roman poet] Juvenal some lines very like to the concluding ones of [Samuel] Johnsons "Vanity of Human Wishes." Could Johnson have borrowed from the heathen? [MAY 24, 1822] (4) . . . As to words & languages being so important--I will have nothing of it. The images, the sweet immortal images are within us--born there, our native right, and sometimes one kind of sounding word or syllable wakens the instrument of our souls and sometimes another. But we are not slaves to sense any more than to political usurpers, but by fashion & imbecility. Aye, if I understand you, so you think. In the zeal of writing I began with the last sentence of your letter, & have just read backwards till I am now for the first time in cool possession of the whole letter--Glad to hear you complain of fine splendid expressions without proportionate fine thoughts. But not that in order to judge you must read all the pieces or rather that you intend a reform which will oblige you to go thro such bogs & fens & sloughs of passion & crime. . . . And to me who am, if possible, more ignorant on the history & character of the Drama than any other subject, it seems a less usefull exercise as it respects the reformer than any scientific or literary pursuit. [JUNE 26, 1822] (5) . . . Would to God thou wert ambitious--respected thyself more & the world less. Thou wouldst not to Cambridge [to enroll at Harvard Divinity School.] . . . It is but a garnished sepulchre where may be found some relics of the body of Jesus--some grosser parts which he took not at his ascent . . . [NOVEMBER 7, 1824] (6) It is worse than idle to ridicule the fall--unless you can account for the origin of evil. . . . The apple may be allegorical--but if it were real it answered for a sign, an arbitrary one, be sure, of a government disciplinary & perspective. The principle of obedience is the first in education--and the more trifling the object the more important the danger of defection. . . . Evil must have a beginning. If it were eternal--! What should we infer--that eternal right was coeval with--& implied in its opposite? . . . Well, one & all have the subject in the dark where God intended. And I never talk of the fall nor think of it--for the difficulties are too great. [JULY 8, 1827] (7) Would I could die today that this aching sense of immortality might be satisfied or cease to ache. The difficulty remains the same when I struggle with the extension of never never never--just as I repeated the exercise in childhood: cant form an idea, cant stretch myself to that which has no end. It may be owing to the limits of childhood repeating the idea & wishing to come at an end in vain. . . . It is this impossibility of losing oneself, tho ages pass over the change, that argues immortality. [SEPTEMBER 9, 1827] (8) My thanks for the sensibility you express at my being hurt to be thought by you distraught. But after all I do appear so to other folks, when under the influence of the indifference I feel to society (or somthing worse) with the extreme pleasure of wittnessing their fine things. The fears which I read in the countenance of my family lead me to act more independently than I should, if I were coaxed with their confidence. . . . You have borne with my outre manners and protected them better than any youth. Only forgive me greater & worser defects of character--and these which pass away with the discordant humours of the body are of no import. [MAY 2, 1828] (9) Let us not complain of calvinism--its most terrible points are better than nothing. If the bible is a fable I would cherish it now in age with undying zeal--It may have a truth of infinite weight like other fables which have a little. But it is not a fable I know. It answers to the living consciousness of Gods impress on the soul. It develops the divinity within. Not the poetic gospelless divinity of German idealism--whose baseless fabrick will vanish into thin air. [AUGUST (?) 1829] (10) You most beloved of ministers, who seemed formed by face, manner & pen to copy & illustrate the noblest of all institutions, are you at war with that angelic office? . . . And I may ask what you mean by speaking of "a great truth whose authority you would feel as its own"? In the letter of Dec 25 you [write] "whether the heart were not the Creator." Now if this withering Lucifer doctrine of pantheism be true, what moral truth can you preach or by what authority should you feel it? Without a personal God you are on an ocean mast unrigged for any port or object. Then why not continue to preach--& pray too? Where is the truth, so infinitely weighty with the true theist, injured? Some body must keep up these idle institutions & they may keep men from jail and gallows. What better scope for the intellectual reservoir? And such has been your integrity, whenever I have been indulged with hearing or reading, what St Paul, who had the fullest convictions of Jesus being the only medium of communication with the Incomprehensible, would not tax your sincerity, tho he would regret the different character you assigned. Pardon me if I declaim with the garrulity of age. [FEBRUARY 1832] (11) I love to gaze after the illuminati. . . . Yet believe with Burke that no im Details ISBN081297509X Short Title AMER TRANSCENDENTALISTS Language English ISBN-10 081297509X ISBN-13 9780812975093 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2006 Subtitle Essential Writings DOI 10.1604/9780812975093 Author Lawrence Buell UK Release Date 2006-01-10 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2006-01-10 NZ Release Date 2006-01-10 US Release Date 2006-01-10 Pages 608 Publisher Random House USA Inc Series Modern Library Classics Publication Date 2006-01-10 Imprint Modern Library Inc Edited by Lawrence Buell DEWEY 191 Audience Children / Juvenile We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:126925677;

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