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The Transcendentalists Paperback – April 25, 2007

by Barbara L. Packer (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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Barbara L. Packer's long essay "The Transcendentalists" is widely acknowledged by scholars of nineteenth-century American literary history as the best-written, most comprehensive treatment to date of Transcendentalism. Previously existing only as part of a volume in the magisterial Cambridge History of American Literature, it will now be available for the first time in a stand-alone edition.

Packer presents Transcendentalism as a living movement, evolving out of such origins as New England Unitarianism and finding early inspiration in European Romanticism. Transcendentalism changed religious beliefs, philosophical ideas, literary styles, and political allegiances. In addition, it was a social movement whose members collaborated on projects and formed close personal ties. Transcendentalism contains vigorous thought and expression throughout, says Packer; only a study of the entire movement can explain its continuing sway over American thought.

Through fresh readings of both the essential Transcendentalist texts and the best current scholarship, Packer conveys the movement's genuine expectations that its radical spirituality not only would lead to personal perfection but also would inspire solutions to such national problems as slavery and disfranchisement. Here is Transcendentalism in whole, with Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller restored to their place alongside such contemporaries as Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, Jones Very, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Orestes Brownson, and Frederick Henry Hedge.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University of Georgia Press
  4. Publication date
    April 25, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    6.12 x 0.72 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0820329584
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0820329581
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

It is curious that in a field long distinguished for its historical scholarship, no satisfactory comprehensive history of the Transcendentalist movement has appeared since 1876. Packer's The Transcendentalists answers that need effectively in an engagingly written study grounded in fresh readings of primary sources and a synthetic command of the best recent scholarship.

-- David M. Robinson ― American Literary Scholarship

This is simply the best contemporary account of Transcendentalism that we have. Packer writes free of jargon and is exact and comprehensive in handling the sweep of thought necessary to discuss the topic.

-- Robert N. Hudspeth ― editor of The Letters of Margaret Fuller

This is the best extended study of Transcendentalism available. Packer's is the only attempt to study and evaluate the movement as a whole. Particularly good are her discussions of the religious, literary, and philosophical aspects of Transcendentalism; her discussion of the Transcendentalists' responses to slavery is a gem. She is a graceful writer and succeeds in dealing with a complex topic.

-- Joel Myerson ― coeditor of The Selected Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Review

It is curious that in a field long distinguished for its historical scholarship, no satisfactory comprehensive history of the Transcendentalist movement has appeared since 1876. Packer's The Transcendentalists answers that need effectively in an engagingly written study grounded in fresh readings of primary sources and a synthetic command of the best recent scholarship.



This is simply the best contemporary account of Transcendentalism that we have. Packer writes free of jargon and is exact and comprehensive in handling the sweep of thought necessary to discuss the topic.



This is the best extended study of Transcendentalism available. Packer's is the only attempt to study and evaluate the movement as a whole. Particularly good are her discussions of the religious, literary, and philosophical aspects of Transcendentalism; her discussion of the Transcendentalists' responses to slavery is a gem. She is a graceful writer and succeeds in dealing with a complex topic.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Georgia Press; First Edition (April 25, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0820329584
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0820329581
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 0.72 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 13 ratings

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Barbara L. Packer

Barbara L. Packer

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4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
13 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Heather Rushworth
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for Transcendentalist lovers
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2013
Verified Purchase
Packer was my professor at UCLA and she was the most brilliant teacher I ever studied under! After reading Emerson for the first time, I caught fire. Over a chat in office hours she told me that the department gave her a great deal of fuss over teaching the Transcendentalists, "Students thing they are booooring. Nobody wants to read them Barbara!!"

I guess that perception was sort of true given that I was usually the only one in her office hours and one of a few students who took the senior seminar in Emerson. But I still find no group of American thinkers more fascinating than these characters. Their commitment to measurable social change and the freedom of the human spirit enlivens their prose and continues to set fire to a new generation of optimistic thinkers.

Packer's reflection on their individual biographies and collective merging reads like a classic novel. She is witty, precise and has an uncanny ability to offer insight into their personal nuances and spiritual character.

There isn't a day I read Emerson that I don't think about Barbara, and miss her greatly.

R.I.P.
8 people found this helpful
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Anonymous
4.0 out of 5 stars Important synthesis, not a definitive history
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2013
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This is surprisingly one of the few books to cover Transcendentalism as a comprehensive movement - considering its religious, philosophical, literary, and social reform aspects. Packer's book is highly readable and informative. She has a respectable cast of characters, which includes many of the too often neglected and so-called "minor" Transcendentalists. Her treatment of Margaret Fuller's Dispatches and the works of Henry David Thoreau were particularly enjoyable. Her treatment of Emerson is more unfavorable and at times contentious, yet her willingness to show a less flattering side of the celebrated Concord sage is somewhat refreshing. While I question a few of Packer's assertions, she deftly handles the intellectual shifts within Transcendentalism with losing her readers in academic jargon. Her history begins with the Unitarian origins of Transcendentalism and the miracle controversy, followed by an examination of the philosophical and European roots of the movement. Interestingly, Packer's story of Transcendentalism is that of intellectual fracturing. The Transcendentalists form their coterie by separating themselves intellectually and institutionally from established traditions, creating a brief moment of seeming unification and synthesis. However, according to Packer, the movement was already declining at its height in the 1840's and was over by the Civil War, concluding with Henry David Thoreau's death. Packer completely neglects the second generation Transcendentalists and the movement's legacies. She also leaves the story of those Transcendentalists who survived Fuller and Thoreau abruptly cut off, as if they stopped living, thinking, and writing. One wonders if Thoreau had survived the Civil War, would Packer's narrative would have ended differently? This history is a wonderful contribution to Transcendentalism historiography, but it is a beginning and not the definitive history on Transcendentalism.
14 people found this helpful
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Deborah H.
2.0 out of 5 stars The obvious is missing
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2021
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I find any story interesting where people are trying to free people from stricture and limitation that cages people or puts personality in a box, making it difficult to think outside the box. Transcendentalism is one such story and the founders attempt to change society but through a too-narrow lens. The author of the book also struggles to tell a more realistic and clear story, more succinctly so, too tied to too much linear thinking that has people scouting through a maze of confusion. The problem is a simple one that is sometimes difficult to face: Nature and instinct are often forbidden in older religious ways, common in male biased theologies, closing the mind off to freeform and heredity to guide personality and creativity. Most who stay within the confinement of Christianity try to access this forbid range through the imagery and interpretation of Jesus, a male figure closer to his mother. He opens the door part way to a different form of love but Biblical prose does not fully enlighten a different formula for commonality or how we instinctively vary. There's also a male biased monopoly over the design of consciousness and this is true of reform. We need more real feeling but also more rational, objective thought to free ourselves of the contrivances and limitations of theology and mysticism.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2014
Verified Purchase
Just what I needed for my school work
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Kirk McElhearn
4.0 out of 5 stars A fine book, but missing the end of the story
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2010
This is a fine, well-researched, well-written book, that examines both the origins of the Transcendentalist movement and its main proponents. As expected, it spends a good deal of time discussing Emerson and Thoreau, but also covers the other important figures of the movement, such as Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott and others.

However, when Packer gets to the 1860s, she just ends the book. After Thoreau's death in 1862, there is just a page and a half, discussing, briefly, the Emancipation Proclamation and Emerson's reaction to it, and little else. Yet the Transcendentalists didn't die out when Thoreau passed. At a minimum, Emerson was active through the 1870s, and I would have liked to know more about the reaction of the key players to the civil war and its aftermath. In addition, the influence of the Transcendentalists is important, and it would have been useful to see how their ideas and thoughts have been adapted in, at least, the decades following their flowering.

Nevertheless, this book is far more interesting than the recent book American Transcendentalism by Philip F. Gura, which gets bogged down in the minutiae of biblical controversy and philosophical details. Packer's book is a good narrative of the group and their time, and is an enjoyable read. But the real history of the Transcendentalists and their legacy has yet to be written.
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