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American Transcendentalism: A History. By Philip F. Gura. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. Pp. xi, 384. Cloth, $27.50; Paper, $15.00.)
The Trans cendentalists. By Barbara Packer. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. Pp. 304. Cloth, $49.95; Paper, $22.95.)
Reviewed by Ryan Mcllhenny
Capturing the central message of Transcendentalism in his essay "SelfReliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson stated plainly that "to be great is to be misunderstood." If misunderstanding characterizes the general reception of those reading the Transcendentalists, then indeed American thinkers like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, and Margaret Fuller must have been the most superior class of thinkers ever produced in America. For nearly two centuries now, from Charles Ellis's Essay on Transcendentalism to the work of Perry Miller, William Hutchinson, Anne Rose, and Catherine Albanese in more recent decades, scholars have attempted to explicate further in order to celebrate the significance of Transcendentalist thought. Barbara Packer, professor of English at UCLA, and Philip Gura, professor of literature and culture at University of Northa Carolina at Chapel Hill, have now added to the discussion. In her appropriately titled The Transcendentalists, an expansion of her similarly titled essay that first appeared in The Cambridge History of American Literature in 1995, Packer intends to show Transcendentalism's "continuing sway over American thought." For Gura, author of American Transcendentalism: A History, a culminating work representing forty years of research, the Transcendentalists "remain one of the nation's most compelling and influential intellectual coteries." Their enigmatic thoughts "have come to define what is 'American' " (xi). If this is true, then to misunderstand Transcendentalism is to misunderstand American identity.
Both authors certainly want to clarify, and in no insignificant degree they succeed. Gura begins with a definition. Transcendentalism espoused the idea "that man has ideas, that come not through the five senses, or the powers of reasoning; but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the spiritual world" (10). Fellow Transcendentalist George Ripley said it more clearly: Truth "transcends the sphere of external senses . . . the supremacy of mind over matter" (143). Mind or spirit was not just the highest reality, but the highest truth. To better appreciate such a definition, Gura and Packer outline the origins...