1 Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Transcendentalism

The year 2000, however auspicious as a cultural moment, was undoubtedly a remarkable year for Transcendentalism. The surge of work in this field continues, fed by Thoreau's centrality to environmental discourse, growing interest in Fuller as an important figure in cultural studies, and Emerson's remarkable endurance (for better or worse) as an originating cultural voice. Attention is now shifting to the late phase of these writers' careers: Thoreau after Walden, Fuller in New York and Italy, and Emerson after "Experience." This shift will be accelerated by William Rossi and Heather Kirk Thomas's edition of the sixth volume of the Princeton edition of Thoreau's Journal, Bradley P. Dean's edition of Thoreau's Wild Fruits, and Judith Mattson Bean and Joel Myerson's edition of Fuller's articles for the New-York Tribune. Also of particular importance are Joel Myerson's comprehensive anthology of Transcendentalist writings, Sarah Ann Wider's inclusive survey of Emerson criticism, and a revised and expanded set of Dictionary of Literary Biography volumes on Transcendentalism edited by Wesley T. Mott. In addition to journal articles from the usual venues, three volumes of essays on Thoreau, one on Emerson, and one on Fuller present some 70 (!) new essays on the movement's major figures. Digging my way out of this blizzard has been no easy task, but I hope to provide a clearer pathway through this exceptionally rich year in Transcendentalist scholarship.

i Emerson

a. The Oxford Historical Guide to Emerson

Joel Myerson's Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson (Oxford) brings together eight new essays that situate Emerson's achievement in its historical context, supplemented by Myerson's "Illustrated Chronology" (pp. 251–67) and "Bibliographical Essay" (pp. 291–309). Ronald A. Bosco's "Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882: A Brief Biography" (pp. 9–58) examines Emerson's "new American testament" of self-trust, a key to his stature as "a principal architect of American culture." Bosco supplements his case for Emerson's centrality to American culture with his essay "We Find What We Seek: Emerson and His Biographers" (pp. 269–90), which delineates "the several phases" of biographical work on Emerson since the 19th century. Bosco's essays are important contributions to the building discussion of Emerson's reception, also featured in the works by Sarah Ann Wider, Randall Fuller, and T. S. McMillin discussed below. In "'The Age of the First Person Singular': Emerson and Individualism" (pp. 61–100) Wesley T. Mott traces the division over Emerson's legacy to "the competing definitions of individualism" in 1830s and 1840s America. The variety of influences in Emerson's complex intellectual development, Mott explains, undermines "stereotypes of Emerson as a self-created Romantic visionary who merely rejected the past." William Rossi's "Emerson, Nature, and Natural Science" (pp. 101–50) perceptively revisits the school of natural theology from which Emerson's thinking about nature emerged, finding the roots of his interest in "natural law" and in "the union of 'moral science' and physical science." These concerns kept him attuned to new scientific paradigms and thus capable of using first Robert Chambers and then, to a limited extent, Darwin in his understanding of nature's "evolutionary progressionism." As Rossi shows, Emerson was forced to acknowledge a "polarity" in nature and in the self that profoundly complicated any theory of an ordered monistic unity. My consideration of "Emerson and Religion" (pp. 151–77) identifies the coalescence of three principal strands of thought in the 1830s, "his exploration of the 'moral sense,' his deepening commitment to the philosophy of idealism, and his new interest in science and the study of nature." Alert readers will note my bold attempt to resurrect "Compensation," long out of favor in Emerson's canon, as one of his most important expositions of the ethical implications of idealism and an indication of his later tendency to minimize the importance of visionary experience, making ethical action his central concern. In a cogent discussion of "Emerson and Antislavery" (pp. 179–209) Gary Collison observes that "the rise of social history and cultural studies" has established that "his contribution to the antislavery movement was...