Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History - Rilegato

Cole, Phyllis

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0195039491 ISBN 13: 9780195039498

Casa editrice: OUP USA, 1998

Riassunto

Mary Moody Emerson has long been a New England legend, the "eccentric Calvinist aunt" of Ralph Waldo Emerson, wearing a death-shroud as her daily garment. This exciting new study, based on the first reading of all her known letters and diaries, reveals a complex human voice and powerful forerunner of American Transcendentalism. From the years of her famous nephew's infancy, in both private and published writings, she celebrated independence, solitude in nature, and inward communion with God.

Mary Moody Emerson inherited both resources and constraints from her family, a lineage of Massachusetts ministers who had earlier practiced spiritual awakening and political resistance against England. Cole discovers a previously unexamined Emerson tradition of fervent piety in the ancestors' own writing and Mary's preservation of their memory. She also examines the position of a woman in this patriarchal family. Barred from the pulpit and university by her sex, she also refused marriage to become a reader, writer, and religious seeker.

Cole's biography explores this reading and writing as both a woman's vocation and a gift to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Helping to raise her nephews after their father's death, Mary Moody Emerson urged Waldo the college student to seek solitude in nature and become a divine poet. Cole's pioneering study, tracing crucial lines of influence from Mary Emerson's heretofore unknown texts to her nephew's major works, establishes a fresh and vital source for a central American literary tradition.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

exceptional new book ... Cole's scholarship reveals how traditions, stories, and ideas reverberate through a notable family history in a manner that justifies a shift from speaking of "aunt Mary" to "nephew Waldo" ... this remarkable book succeeds as both a "family history" and a history of ideas centering around one woman ... Cole has delivered a portrait of a luminous mind and a significant influence who until now we have known mostly as she appears on the cover: a shadow behind others, framed in silhouette. (Branden T C Miller, The British Library)

"Feminist archaeology at its most impressive, Phyllis Cole's Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism recovers a woman of extraordinary intellect. An heir to New England Puritanism, Emerson infused that legacy with a powerful Romanticism. Companion and critic to her nephew Ralph Waldo Emerson, she became a primary source for his celebrated individualism. Bringing an interpretive originality to all these traditions, the female Emerson can now take her rightful place as a signal contributor to the New England Renaissance."―Mary Kelley, Dartmouth College

Su questa edizione

• Editore: OUP USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0195039491
• ISBN 13: 9780195039498
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 384