Charles Capper
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195092677
- eISBN:
- 9780199854264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195092677.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1839 to 1840. In starting her Conversations for women, Fuller launched her career as a transcendentalist leader. ...
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This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1839 to 1840. In starting her Conversations for women, Fuller launched her career as a transcendentalist leader. Her timing was perfect because it was during this time that the transcendentalist movement was gaining attention spurred by Ralph Waldo Emerson's remarkable address to the graduating class at Harvard Divinity School. Several other transcendentalists published critical books and journals including Orestes Brownston and George Ripley.Less
This chapter examines the life and career of Margaret Fuller during the period from 1839 to 1840. In starting her Conversations for women, Fuller launched her career as a transcendentalist leader. Her timing was perfect because it was during this time that the transcendentalist movement was gaining attention spurred by Ralph Waldo Emerson's remarkable address to the graduating class at Harvard Divinity School. Several other transcendentalists published critical books and journals including Orestes Brownston and George Ripley.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226709635
- eISBN:
- 9780226709659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226709659.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter poses the question of what the transcendentalist movement would look like if we placed McLean Asylum as the central institution against which the group defined its relation to New ...
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This chapter poses the question of what the transcendentalist movement would look like if we placed McLean Asylum as the central institution against which the group defined its relation to New England culture. The key figures in the story are Ralph Waldo Emerson and his acolyte Jones Very, the self-proclaimed Second Coming of Christ and writer of visionary poetry, who was confined in McLean Asylum shortly after hearing Emerson's infamous “Divinity School Address” in 1838. Through the writings on Very by Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and others in this philosophical-literary movement, the chapter examines the transcendentalists' guarded accommodation to early psychiatry—a profession that would seem to cut against the core of their anti-institutional thinking, their emphasis on non-conformism, and their radical individualism, but that intersected with the movement in surprisingly frequent and intimate ways. What emerges is a glimpse of the uneasily shared ground of American literary romanticism and psychiatry, both of which movements saw themselves as fortifying the individual against the threats of modernization and social atomization. The chapter concludes with a reading of Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance.”Less
This chapter poses the question of what the transcendentalist movement would look like if we placed McLean Asylum as the central institution against which the group defined its relation to New England culture. The key figures in the story are Ralph Waldo Emerson and his acolyte Jones Very, the self-proclaimed Second Coming of Christ and writer of visionary poetry, who was confined in McLean Asylum shortly after hearing Emerson's infamous “Divinity School Address” in 1838. Through the writings on Very by Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and others in this philosophical-literary movement, the chapter examines the transcendentalists' guarded accommodation to early psychiatry—a profession that would seem to cut against the core of their anti-institutional thinking, their emphasis on non-conformism, and their radical individualism, but that intersected with the movement in surprisingly frequent and intimate ways. What emerges is a glimpse of the uneasily shared ground of American literary romanticism and psychiatry, both of which movements saw themselves as fortifying the individual against the threats of modernization and social atomization. The chapter concludes with a reading of Emerson's essay “Self-Reliance.”
David Dowling
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300197440
- eISBN:
- 9780300206760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197440.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This book examines the professional fates of an idealistic group of young talented writers in whom Ralph Waldo Emerson invested generous time, energy, creativity, and capital for their literary ...
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This book examines the professional fates of an idealistic group of young talented writers in whom Ralph Waldo Emerson invested generous time, energy, creativity, and capital for their literary success. It explores the broader and richer historical context of the literary market that mitigated the material consequences of the careers of Emerson's protégés, which included Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Samuel Ward, Jones Very, Ellery Channing, and Charles Newcomb. It shows how Emerson sought to engender these collegians to carry the torch for “The Newness,” the name given to the transcendentalist movement in Concord. The book also places the significance of the protégés' apprenticeships within the conceptual framework of the social role of literary vocation in transcendental authorship, together with the concept of genius as the framework for Emerson's mentorship.Less
This book examines the professional fates of an idealistic group of young talented writers in whom Ralph Waldo Emerson invested generous time, energy, creativity, and capital for their literary success. It explores the broader and richer historical context of the literary market that mitigated the material consequences of the careers of Emerson's protégés, which included Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Samuel Ward, Jones Very, Ellery Channing, and Charles Newcomb. It shows how Emerson sought to engender these collegians to carry the torch for “The Newness,” the name given to the transcendentalist movement in Concord. The book also places the significance of the protégés' apprenticeships within the conceptual framework of the social role of literary vocation in transcendental authorship, together with the concept of genius as the framework for Emerson's mentorship.
Charles Capper
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195092677
- eISBN:
- 9780199854264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195092677.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines New England ancestry and the inheritance of Margaret Fuller, the organizer of the transcendentalist movement journal Dial. Fuller was in her habitat and ancestry a thorough New ...
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This chapter examines New England ancestry and the inheritance of Margaret Fuller, the organizer of the transcendentalist movement journal Dial. Fuller was in her habitat and ancestry a thorough New Englander and her lineage was long, beginning with the first Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This chapter describes Fuller's negative perception of the Puritans and traces the records of her own Puritan ancestors.Less
This chapter examines New England ancestry and the inheritance of Margaret Fuller, the organizer of the transcendentalist movement journal Dial. Fuller was in her habitat and ancestry a thorough New Englander and her lineage was long, beginning with the first Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This chapter describes Fuller's negative perception of the Puritans and traces the records of her own Puritan ancestors.
Michele Dillon and Paul Wink
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520249004
- eISBN:
- 9780520940031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520249004.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This chapter discusses the concept of the spiritual seeking of Americans. In America, the first spiritual awakening dates back to the 1830s and 1840s, and that is associated with the emergence of the ...
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This chapter discusses the concept of the spiritual seeking of Americans. In America, the first spiritual awakening dates back to the 1830s and 1840s, and that is associated with the emergence of the transcendentalist movement and renowned figures such as Emerson and Thoreau. What is new about American spiritual seeking in the post-1960s era is its pervasiveness. Prior to the 1960s, only a small proportion of Americans attempted to fulfill their spiritual needs outside the domain of denominational religion. Since then, a vastly expanded spiritual marketplace has produced a growing trend toward uncoupling religion and spirituality. The autonomy associated with spiritual seeking is different. This chapter charts a path that may have relatively little truck with the ways established in traditional religious beliefs and practices. It is constituted by a personal autonomy that tends to be somewhat removed from, rather than in singular conversation with, church-based religion.Less
This chapter discusses the concept of the spiritual seeking of Americans. In America, the first spiritual awakening dates back to the 1830s and 1840s, and that is associated with the emergence of the transcendentalist movement and renowned figures such as Emerson and Thoreau. What is new about American spiritual seeking in the post-1960s era is its pervasiveness. Prior to the 1960s, only a small proportion of Americans attempted to fulfill their spiritual needs outside the domain of denominational religion. Since then, a vastly expanded spiritual marketplace has produced a growing trend toward uncoupling religion and spirituality. The autonomy associated with spiritual seeking is different. This chapter charts a path that may have relatively little truck with the ways established in traditional religious beliefs and practices. It is constituted by a personal autonomy that tends to be somewhat removed from, rather than in singular conversation with, church-based religion.
David Dowling
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300197440
- eISBN:
- 9780300206760
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197440.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
In the late 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, publicly called for a radical nationwide vocational reinvention, and an ...
More
In the late 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, publicly called for a radical nationwide vocational reinvention, and an idealistic group of collegians eagerly responded. Assuming the role of mentor, editor, and promoter, Emerson freely offered them his time, financial support, and antimaterialistic counsel, and profoundly shaped the careers of his young acolytes—including Henry David Thoreau, renowned journalist and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller, and lesser-known literary figures such as Samuel Ward and reckless romantic poets Jones Very, Ellery Channing, and Charles Newcomb. This book's history of the professional and personal relationships between Emerson and his protégés—a remarkable collaboration that alternately proved fruitful and destructive, tension-filled and liberating—is a fascinating true story of altruism, ego, influence, pettiness, genius, and the bold attempt to reshape the literary market of the mid-nineteenth century.Less
In the late 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, publicly called for a radical nationwide vocational reinvention, and an idealistic group of collegians eagerly responded. Assuming the role of mentor, editor, and promoter, Emerson freely offered them his time, financial support, and antimaterialistic counsel, and profoundly shaped the careers of his young acolytes—including Henry David Thoreau, renowned journalist and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller, and lesser-known literary figures such as Samuel Ward and reckless romantic poets Jones Very, Ellery Channing, and Charles Newcomb. This book's history of the professional and personal relationships between Emerson and his protégés—a remarkable collaboration that alternately proved fruitful and destructive, tension-filled and liberating—is a fascinating true story of altruism, ego, influence, pettiness, genius, and the bold attempt to reshape the literary market of the mid-nineteenth century.
David Dowling
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300197440
- eISBN:
- 9780300206760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197440.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson's mentorship of aristocratic Boston banker and art critic Samuel Gray Ward. It considers how Ward filled Emerson's need for an art critic in his journal, ...
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This chapter focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson's mentorship of aristocratic Boston banker and art critic Samuel Gray Ward. It considers how Ward filled Emerson's need for an art critic in his journal, the Dial. Before analyzing the relationship between Ward and Emerson, the chapter examines Ward's decision to marry wealthy socialite Anna Barker rather than Margaret Fuller, and how that marriage was perceived by many as a defection from the transcendentalist movement. It then turns to the reaction of Emerson and Elizabeth Peabody to the Ward-Barker union before concluding with a discussion of Ward's writings on art criticism and history.Less
This chapter focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson's mentorship of aristocratic Boston banker and art critic Samuel Gray Ward. It considers how Ward filled Emerson's need for an art critic in his journal, the Dial. Before analyzing the relationship between Ward and Emerson, the chapter examines Ward's decision to marry wealthy socialite Anna Barker rather than Margaret Fuller, and how that marriage was perceived by many as a defection from the transcendentalist movement. It then turns to the reaction of Emerson and Elizabeth Peabody to the Ward-Barker union before concluding with a discussion of Ward's writings on art criticism and history.
