The Transcendentalists

by Barbara L. Packer

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Criticism

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2007

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would add just a bit to Jonathan's review.

As far as I know, Packer's is the first historical account of transcendentalism in the US to delineate a "trajectory" of its life cycle. She identifies four phases: (1) the origins of transcendentalism during the first third of the 19th century in the context of religious controversies within the Uniterian faith and church, (2) the attempt and initial success among certain transcendentalists to establish a "movement" through the Transcendentalist Club and the publication of The Dial during the 1830s and 1840s; (3) the failure of that effort as these strong and independent minded individuals abandonded any attempt to unify and pursued their own interests and causes during the 1840s; (4) the relatively brief period of renewed unity among transcendentalists following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and their common commitment to abolitionism.

No doubt certain readers will disagree with Packer and have already, most likely, but she does present a plausible point of departure for debate.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview and a model for American intellectual historians. Packer situates the Transcendentalists. She shows how Unitarian New England both nurtured and appalled them, how European ideas and events transfixed them, how they encouraged and exasperated each other, and how their individualistic and idealistic philosophy left them with an ambiguous social legacy. Resistant to conformity, the Transcendentalists were simultaneously the avant-garde and the rear echelon of reform in America. And, Packer concludes, they owed their tenacity and intellectual range to the sturdy New England moralism into which they were born.

Packer skillfully navigates through the lives and publishing projects of the various Transcendentalists and their associates, following one figure and then another without losing her way in the overall chronology. She examines them critically, sympathetically, and humorously, teasing them for their eccentricities and pettiness as well as showing us their many moments of courage and literary brilliance.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defying the traditional approach, Barbara L. Packer’s The Transcendentalists begins in medias res and constitutes a thorough analysis of transcendentalism. The author skillfully guides her readers through nine chapters that provide a comprehensive understanding of this American historical, social, religious, and literary movement. Packer’s text is not just a rehash of the key moments and figures of transcendentalism, but an invaluable guide to any student of the American past.

Her first chapter positions the birth of transcendentalism as an offspring of Unitarianism, itself a breakaway from conservative religious orthodoxy in New England. As Ralph Waldo Emerson first describes it, transcendental ideas stemmed from a “cluster of discontents” from a new generation that sought to be “devoted to the enlargement of the individual” (1). Packer points to John Locke’s arguments regarding the religious importance of personal knowledge, the growth of historical criticism in Germany, and new Biblical criticism as transcendental influences. These factors attest to a “restlessness always implicit in Unitarianism’s exaltation of the moral sense” that left a legacy of a “sense of imminent clarification” that sparked the movement (19).

An examination of Locke and Carlyle reveals the “unresolved contradictions” liberal Unitarians encountered and who they turned to for answers (20). While Lockean emphasis on the individual appealed to figures like Emerson, critics of Locke’s works along with Harvard’s structured classes built solely on memorization and recitation motivated Emerson to look abroad to figures like Madame de Staël (who wrote that we need not reject the world of experience) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who made a distinction between reason and understanding). Packer argues that these writings “seemed to offer Unitarians a way out of their spiritual dilemma—a way for them to satisfy the hunger for contact with the transcendent without abandoning the values of tolerance and rational enquiry” (24-25). Influenced by Thomas Carlyle more than any other figure, Emerson celebrated Carlyle’s writings because they embodied a new possibility for Americans—the vocation of the literary life. This new possibility appealed not only to traditional Harvard scholars like Emerson, but non-traditional figures as well, including self-taught Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott.

Packer then records the first meeting of the Transcendental Club on September 8, 1836, its key members and initial manifestos, and the criticism the movement received. The club’s first meeting--an invitation-only membership--included Emerson, Hedge, Ripley, and Putnam. Packer argues that this meeting along with the publication of Emerson’s Nature the following day, signaled that Transcendentalism was not the “affair of isolated seclusion writing in lonely integrity” that we often recall with Thoreau at Walden Pond, but instead a significant “coterie affair” (48). While Emerson’s Nature--an exploration of Emanuel Swedenborg’s doctrine of “correspondence”--marked the first official Transcendental text, many more followed within the year, including Brownson’s New View of Christianity, Society and the Church (which argued that only out of Unitarianism could the “church of the future” evolve) and Alcott’s Conversations with Children on the Gospel about his experiences teaching Transcendental ideas in Temple School. While Alcott’s methods received the first round of attacks, Emerson himself soon became a target. Packer argues Emerson was very aware of his position in the marketplace and had to mask his anxiety about negative press by putting on an “affectation of unconcern, almost indeed of dandyism” (77-78). By mentioning the 1782 act that made blasphemy a legal offense, Packer paints Emerson as a socially conscious figure.

Periodicals were of great importance to Transcendental writers. Clarke’s role as editor for the Western Messenger was to defend Unitarian doctrine. Oresetes Brownson created three journals (the Boston Quarterly Review, Philanthropist, and Boston Reformer) and was the sole contributor to the first, writing an estimated 150,000 words per year to keep it running (103). The Transcendentalists then created their own well-known periodical, The Dial, which ran under the editorship Fuller and then Emerson. Packer sees Fuller failing as editor and notes her refusal to publish Thoreau, who was not accepted until Emerson took over.

The Transcendentalists were aware of the reform movements happening across the country, but refrained from embracing any particular movement due to their “intense dislike of all forms of association” (130). It was at this time, however, that Ripley began his social experiment, Brook Farm, as an attempt to participate in social reform through building a new egalitarian society. The community ultimately failed and received extensive criticism, most famously within Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance. Packer argues that for Emerson, “the defeat of so much hope testified to the irreconcilability of the world of desire and the world of actuality” (163).

Packer’s concluding chapters on diaspora and the antislavery years detail the slow break-up of the group and its members. Emerson traveled Europe and lectured before having to declare his position in the abolition movement after the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850's. His fraught friendship continued with Thoreau as he wrote Walden about experimental living and writing. Packer also points to Margaret Fuller’s love affair, death, and Woman in the Nineteenth Century as marking the ending of the Transcendentalist movement.

Packer concludes her book with an excerpt from Emerson's Nature: “we did not guess its essence until after a long time” (274). Impressive in its comprehensive scope and analysis of Transcendentalism, Packer’s text is essential scholarship for any student of the period.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is part history of the 19th century from the perspective of the transcendentalists and part literary commentary of their major works. My favorite sections were the failure of the Brook Farm experiment, the life and death of Margaret Fuller, the abolitionist activities (including the Anthony Burns episode), and the life and writings of Henry David Thoreau.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 without 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.

[Di Taylor]

Before taking a thematic literature class "Quest & Arrival" this spring I had never heard the term transcendentalism and yet just a few weeks int the semester I was dying to read more about these ideas and the players. I'm just a third of the way through the book and like the literature class this books is certainly expanding on the thought provoking and life altering thoughts. I'm sure because of this book I will be scouting out other books on this way of life.

[Corinne Blackmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barbara Packer's book is a tour de force.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intellectual biography of the movement. Surprisingly powerful section on Margaret Fuller's last years.