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

Basic information

Original name

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

Authors

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan (840 United States of America, guarantor, belonging to the institution)

Edition

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

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Článek v odborném periodiku

Field of Study

60200 6.2 Languages and Literature

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

URL

RIV identification code

RIV/00216224:14210/14:00085458

Organization unit

Faculty of Arts

Keywords in English

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

Abstract

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."

Links

MUNI/A/1246/2014, interní kód MU

Name: Nové směry v anglofonním jazykovědném a literárním výzkumu III (Acronym: NDALLR3)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

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, vol. 24, No 48, p. 79-93. ISSN 0862-8424.

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   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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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, vol.~24, No~48, p.~79-93. ISSN~0862-8424.

Detailed Information on Publication Record