These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual
Authority

J 2014

These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual Authority

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan

Základní údaje

Originální název

These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual Authority

Autoři

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan (840 Spojené státy, garant, domácí)

Vydání

Litteraria Pragensia, Praha, Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur FF UK, 2014, 0862-8424

Další údaje

Jazyk

angličtina

Typ výsledku

Článek v odborném periodiku

Obor

60200 6.2 Languages and Literature

Stát vydavatele

Česká republika

Utajení

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Odkazy

URL

Kód RIV

RIV/00216224:14210/14:00085458

Organizační jednotka

Filozofická fakulta

Klíčová slova anglicky

Ralph Waldo Emerson; Bible; United States; Nineteenth-century literature; Joseph Smith; William Miller; Walt Whitman

Štítky

Bible, Joseph Smith, Nineteenth Century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rivok, United States, Walt Whitman, William Miller

Příznaky

Mezinárodní význam, Recenzováno

Změněno: 24. 2. 2018 13:13, Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph.D.

Anotace

V originále

Americans in the era of the Second Great Awakening faced a problem intrinsic to Protestantism: the difficulty of grounding authority in a sacred text. Ralph Waldo Emerson's emergence from Unitarian circles immediately followed three native-born religious movements, each of which had focused on one aspect of that problem. William Miller's Adventism responded to doubt; Alexander Campbell's Restorationism took aim at sectarian disagreement; and Joseph Smith's Mormonism vividly sought to overcome dullness. Re-reading and even rewriting the Bible in increasingly radical ways, these movements represented three of the logically possible answers to the self-contradictions of textual authority. This essay argues for seeing Emerson's Transcendentalism as a fourth way. What linked this movement both to Unitarian controversy and romantic idealism, on the one hand, and on the other to the modern creation of a new, secular literary "canon" of America's own, was its immersion in biblical and textual anxieties. Recovering and re-employing the spirit behind the ancient sacred books, Transcendentalists insisted on rethinking not just the Bible but text-based authority as such – and like the other movements, they did this to counter a particular problem: in their case, an array of modern ills that Emerson summed up in the word "desponding."

Návaznosti

MUNI/A/1246/2014, interní kód MU

Název: Nové směry v anglofonním jazykovědném a literárním výzkumu III (Akronym: NDALLR3)

Investor: Masarykova univerzita, Nové směry v anglofonním jazykovědném a literárním výzkumu III, DO R. 2020_Kategorie A - Specifický výzkum - Studentské výzkumné projekty

Citovat

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual Authority. Litteraria Pragensia. Praha: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur FF UK, 2014, roč. 24, č. 48, s. 79-93. ISSN 0862-8424.

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   author = {Smith, Jeffrey Alan},
   article_location = {Praha},
   article_number = {48},
   keywords = {Ralph Waldo Emerson; Bible; United States; Nineteenth-century literature; Joseph Smith; William Miller; Walt Whitman},
   language = {eng},
   issn = {0862-8424},
   journal = {Litteraria Pragensia},
   title = {These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual Authority},
   url = {http://litteraria-pragensia.ff.cuni.cz/front.issue/detail/50},
   volume = {24},
   year = {2014}
}

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KW  - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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N2  - Americans in the era of the Second Great Awakening faced a problem intrinsic to Protestantism: the difficulty of grounding authority in a sacred text. Ralph Waldo Emerson's emergence from Unitarian circles immediately followed three native-born religious movements, each of which had focused on one aspect of that problem. William Miller's Adventism responded to doubt; Alexander Campbell's Restorationism took aim at sectarian disagreement; and Joseph Smith's Mormonism vividly sought to overcome dullness. Re-reading and even rewriting the Bible in increasingly radical ways, these movements represented three of the logically possible answers to the self-contradictions of textual authority. This essay argues for seeing Emerson's Transcendentalism as a fourth way. What linked this movement both to Unitarian controversy and romantic idealism, on the one hand, and on the other to the modern creation of a new, secular literary "canon" of America's own, was its immersion in biblical and textual anxieties. Recovering and re-employing the spirit behind the ancient sacred books, Transcendentalists insisted on rethinking not just the Bible but text-based authority as such – and like the other movements, they did this to counter a particular problem: in their case, an array of modern ills that Emerson summed up in the word "desponding."
ER  -

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. These Desponding Days : Emerson and America's Crisis of Textual Authority. \textit{Litteraria Pragensia}. Praha: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur FF UK, 2014, roč.~24, č.~48, s.~79-93. ISSN~0862-8424.

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