Crisis and Transcendence I: The Legacy of American Transcendentalism

Harvard HDS

The American Transcendentalists lived, thought, and wrote in an age of upheaval. Historical criticism challenged the authority of scripture; modern science transformed prevailing conceptions of truth and nature; chattel slavery exposed the moral bankruptcy of established political and religious institutions; and industrialization unsettled inherited forms of labor, community, and selfhood. This course approaches Transcendentalism not as a genteel literary movement but as a sustained, often…