Research Catalog

Title

The fate of transcendentalism : secularity, materiality, and human flourishing / Bruce A. Ronda.

Author

Ronda, Bruce A.

Publication

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 247 pages; 24 cm

Summary

The Fate of Transcendentalism examines the mid-nineteenth-century flowering of American transcendentalism and shows the movement's influence on several subsequent writers, thinkers, and artists who have drawn inspiration and energy from the creative outpouring it produced. In this wide-ranging study, Bruce A. Ronda offers an account of the movement as an early example of the secular turn in American culture and brings to bear insights from philosopher Charles Taylor and others who have studied the broad cultural phenomenon of secularization. Ronda's account turns on the interplay and tension between two strands in the transcendentalist movement. Many of the social experiements associated with transcendentalism, such as the Brook Farm and Fruitlands reform communities, Temple School, and the West Street Bookshop, as well as the transcendentalists' contributions to abolition and women's rights, spring from a commitment to human flourishing without reference to a larger religious worldview. Other aspects of the movement, particularly Henry David Thoreau's late nature writing and the rich tradition it has inspired, seek to minimize the difference between the material and the ideal, the human and the not-human. The Fate of Transcendentalism allows readers to engage with this fascinating dialogue between transcendentalist thinkers who believe that the ultimate end of human life is the fulfillment of human possibility and others who challenge human-centeredness in favor of a relocation of humanity in a vital cosmos. Ronda traces the persistence of transcendentalism in the work of several representative twentieth- and twenty-first-century figures, including Charles Ives, Joseph Cornell, Truman Nelson, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver, and shows how this dialogue continues to inform important imaginative work to this date. -- from back cover.

Subjects

• Cornell, Joseph, 1903-1972
• Transcendentalism
• Neuengland
• Umschulungswerkstätten für Siedler und Auswanderer Bitterfeld
• Transcendentalism (New England)
• Dillard, Annie, 1945-
• Oliver, Mary, 1935-2019
• Transzendentalismus
• Taylor, Charles, 1931-
• Ives, Charles, 1874-1954
• Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Transcendentalism and the secular turn -- Transcendentalism in the postwar years -- Gender, reform, and ridicule -- Charles Ives : sound -- Joseph Cornell : things -- Truman Nelson : rage -- Beston, Oliver, Dillard, and fluid transcendentalism.

Call Number

JFE 19-133

ISBN

• 9780820351247
• 0820351245

LCCN

2017003730

OCLC

981118339

Author

Ronda, Bruce A., author.

Title

The fate of transcendentalism : secularity, materiality, and human flourishing / Bruce A. Ronda.

Publisher

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 19-133