Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism

Traditional histories of the American transcendentalist movement begin in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s terms: describing a rejection of college books and church pulpits in favor of the individual power of “Man Thinking.” This essay collection asks how women who lacked the privileges of both college and clergy rose to thought. For them, reading alone and conversing together were the primary means of growth, necessarily in private and informal spaces both overlapping with those of the men and apart from them. But these were means to achieving literary, aesthetic, and political authority— indeed, to claiming utopian possibility for women as a whole. __Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism__ is a project of both archaeology and reinterpretation. Many of its seventeen distinguished and rising scholars work from newly recovered archives, and all offer fresh readings of understudied topics and texts. First quickened by the 2010 bicentennial of Margaret Fuller’s birth, the project reaches beyond Fuller to her female predecessors, contemporaries, and successors throughout the nineteenth century who contributed to or grew from the transcendentalist movement. Geographic scope also widens—from the New England base to national and transatlantic spheres. A shared goal is to understand this “genealogy” within a larger history of American women writers; no absolute boundaries divide idealism from sentiment, romantics from realists, or white discourse from black. Primary-text interludes invite readers into the ongoing task of discovering and interpreting transcendentally affiliated women. This collection recognizes the vibrant contributions women made to a major literary movement and will appeal to both scholars and general readers. Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Primary Interludes 10 Acknowledgments 12 List of Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Texts 14 Introduction 22 SECTION 1 Early Voices, Origins, Influences 48 "Let me do nothing smale”: Mary Moody Emerson and Women’s “Talking” Manuscripts 52 "With the Eyes That Are Given Me”: Early Transcendentalism and Feminist Colonial Poetics in Sophia Peabody’s Cuba Journal 76 Fuller, Goethe, Bettine: Cultural Transfer and Imagined German Womanhood 98 What Did Margaret Think of George? 122 Elizabeth Peabody in the Nineteenth Century: Autobiographical Perspectives 148 SECTION 2 Transcendentalist Circles 170 "How It All Lies before Me To-day”: Transcendentalist Women’s Journeys into Attention 174 "We have abolished domestic servitude”: Women and Work at Brook Farm 196 Sentimental Transcendentalism and Political Affect: Child and Fuller in New York 224 (S)exchanges: Julia Ward Howe’s The Hermaphrodite and the Gender Dialectics of Transcendentalism 246 SECTION 3 Wider Circles of Vision and Action 266 Green Exaltadas: Margaret Fuller, Transcendentalist Conservationism, and Antebellum Women’s Nature Writing 270 “Each Atomic Part”: Edmonia Goodelle Highgate’s African American Transcendentalism 294 Caroline Healey Dall and the American Social Science Movement 320 Transcendental Erotics, Same-Sex Desire, and Ethel’s Love-Life 344 SECTION 4 Late Voices and Legacies 366 Required to “Speak”: Caroline Healey Dall and the Defense of Margaret Fuller 370 “A Woman’s Place”: The Transcendental Realism of Mary Wilkins Freeman 394 Black Exaltadas: Race, Reform, and Spectacular Womanhood after Fuller 416 The Cosmopolitan Project of Louisa May Alcott 440 Selected Bibliography 464 Contributors 484 Index 488 A 488 B 490 C 491 D 494 E 495 F 496 G 499 H 500 I 502 J 502 K 502 L 502 M 503 N 505 O 505 P 506 Q 507 R 507 S 508 T 511 U 512 V 512 W 512 Y 513 Z 513 "Traditional histories of the American transcendentalist movement begin in Ralph Waldo Emerson's terms: describing a rejection of college books and church pulpits in favor of the individual power of "Man Thinking." This essay collection asks how women who lacked the privileges of both college and clergy rose to thought. For them, reading alone and conversing together were the primary means of growth, necessarily in private and informal spaces both overlapping with those of the men and apart from them. But these were means to achieving literary, aesthetic, and political authority- indeed, to claiming utopian possibility for women as a whole. Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalismis a project of both archaeology and reinterpretation. Many of its seventeen distinguished and rising scholars work from newly recovered archives, and all offer fresh readings of understudied topics and texts. First quickened by the 2010 bicentennial of Margaret Fuller's birth, the project reaches beyond Fuller to her female predecessors, contemporaries, and successors throughout the nineteenth century who contributed to or grew from the transcendentalist movement. Geographic scope also widens-from the New England base to national and transatlantic spheres. A shared goal is to understand this "genealogy" within a larger history of American women writers; no absolute boundaries divide idealism from sentiment, romantics from realists, or white discourse from black. Primary-text interludes invite readers into the ongoing task of discovering and interpreting transcendentally affiliated women. This collection recognizes the vibrant contributions women made to a major literary movement and will appeal to both scholars and general readers."--JSTOR website (viewed May 26, 2017)

Traditional histories of the American transcendentalist movement begin in Ralph Waldo Emerson's terms: describing a rejection of college books and church pulpits in favor of the individual power of "Man Thinking." This essay collection asks how women who lacked the privileges of both college and clergy rose to thought. For them, reading alone and conversing together were the primary means of growth, necessarily in private and informal spaces both overlapping with those of the men and apart from them. But these were means to achieving literary, aesthetic, and political authority— indeed, to claiming utopian possibility for women as a whole.

Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism is a project of both archaeology and reinterpretation. Many of its seventeen distinguished and rising scholars work from newly recovered archives, and all offer fresh readings of understudied topics and texts. First quickened by the 2010 bicentennial of Margaret Fuller's birth, the project reaches beyond Fuller to her female predecessors, contemporaries, and successors throughout the nineteenth century who contributed to or grew from the transcendentalist movement.

Geographic scope also widens—from the New England base to national and transatlantic spheres. A shared goal is to understand this "genealogy" within a larger history of American women writers; no absolute boundaries divide idealism from sentiment, romantics from realists, or white discourse from black. Primary-text interludes invite readers into the ongoing task of discovering and interpreting transcendentally affiliated women. This collection recognizes the vibrant contributions women made to a major literary movement and will appeal to both scholars and general readers.

Traditional histories of the American transcendentalist movement begin in Ralph Waldo Emerson's terms: describing a rejection of college books and church pulpits in favor of the individual power of "Man Thinking." This essay collection asks how women who lacked the privileges of both college and clergy rose to thought. For them, reading alone and conversing together were the primary means of growth, necessarily in private and informal spaces both overlapping with those of the men and apart from them. But these were means to achieving literary, aesthetic, and political authority indeed, to claiming utopian possibility for women as a whole. Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism is a project of both archaeology and reinterpretation. Many of its seventeen distinguished and rising scholars work from newly recovered archives, and all offer fresh readings of understudied topics and texts. First quickened by the 2010 bicentennial of Margaret Fuller's birth, the project reaches beyond Fuller to her female predecessors, contemporaries, and successors throughout the nineteenth century who contributed to or grew from the transcendentalist movement. Geographic scope also widens from the New England base to national and transatlantic spheres. A shared goal is to understand this "genealogy" within a larger history of American women writers; no absolute boundaries divide idealism from sentiment, romantics from realists, or white discourse from black. Primary-text interludes invite readers into the ongoing task of discovering and interpreting transcendentally affiliated women. This collection recognizes the vibrant contributions women made to a major literary movement and will appeal to both scholars and general readers. -- Amazon.com