Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and Its Contexts (Massachusetts Historical Society Studies in American History) - Softcover

Charles Capper (editor) & Conrad Edick Wright (editor)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0934909814 ISBN 13: 9780934909815

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2011

Synopsis

The essays in this collection capture New England's Transcendentalists in all their complexity. As authors, philosophers, theologians, and artists the circle's adherents challenged their era's spiritual and secular orthodoxies between the 1830s and the 1850s. As critics and reformers they questioned the structure of their society and pressed for change. Contributions to this volume discuss the relationship between Transcendentalism and New England's religious mainstream, the movement and intellectual currents in the nineteenth century, Transcendentalist critiques of society and proposals for reform, the circle's cultural legacy, and its treatment by historians and literary critics.

About this title

Synopsis:

Comprising twenty essays by leading scholars, this insightful collection provides the best recent writing on the Transcendentalists, the New England religious reformers and intellectuals who challenged both spiritual and secular orthodoxies between the 1830s and the 1850s. The volume addresses Transcendentalism from many directions, illuminating the movement more clearly than ever before. The contributions consider aspects of the relationship between the Transcendentalists and their intellectual and social world, assess the movement's cultural legacy, and place Transcendentalism in the context of historical and literary scholarship, past and present.

About the Author:

CHARLES CAPPER is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at the University of North Carolina. CONRAD EDICK WRIGHT is Ford Editor of Publications and Director of the Center for the Study of New England History at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0934909814
• ISBN 13: 9780934909815
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200