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Book Cover
E-book
Author Versluis, Arthur, 1959-

Title American transcendentalism and Asian religions / Arthur Versluis
Published New York : Oxford University Press, 1993

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 355 pages)
Series Religion in America series
Religion in America series (Oxford University Press)
Contents Introduction: Transcendentalism and the Orient -- Predecessors: The First Meetings of East and West -- The German Tradition and the East -- The English Romantics and the Orient Fair -- Joseph Priestley: Moses and the Hindoos -- Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and the Orient -- Emerson's "Asia Mine," -- Thoreau Sauntering Eastward -- Alcott's Universal Bible -- The Dissenters: Melville and Brownson -- Melville as Gnostic -- Orestes Brownson and Tradition -- The Ambience: Orientalism in General-Interest American Magazines -- The Popular Climate West and East -- Ambience and Embodiment of Transcendental Dreams -- Converting the World -- Images of America's Golden Age -- Transcendental Dreams and Earthly Fiction -- Transcendentalist Periodicals and the Orient -- Literary Religion and Social Reform: The Western Messenger, The Dial, The Present, The Harbinger, and The Spirit of the Age -- The Universal and the Particular: The Cincinnati Dial, The Radical, The Index, and the Journal of Speculative Philosophy -- Patterns in Literary Religion: The Orient and the Second Cycle of Transcendentalism -- Beginnings: Lydia Maria Child and The Progress of Religious Ideas -- Unitarian Transcendentalism: James Freeman Clarke and Elizabeth Peabody -- Universal Religion: John Weiss and Samuel Johnson -- The Sympathetic Universalism of William Rounseville Alger -- Octavius Brooks Frothingham's Religion of Humanity and Moncure Conway's Anthropocentrism -- Drawing Conclusions in the Drawing Room -- Artists and Asia -- Popular Ramifications -- The Twentieth Century
Summary The first major study since the 1930s of the relationship between American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, and the first comprehensive work to include post-Civil War Transcendentalists like Samuel Johnson, this book is encyclopedic in scope. Beginning with the inception of Transcendentalist Orientalism in Europe, Versluis covers the entire history of American Transcendentalism into the twentieth century, and the profound influence of Orientalism on the movement-including its analogues and influences in world religious dialogue. He examines what he calls "positive Orientalism," which recognizes the value and perennial truths in Asian religions and cultures, not only in the writings of major figures like Thoreau and Emerson, but also in contemporary popular magazines. Versluis's exploration of the impact of Transcendentalism on the twentieth-century study of comparative religions has ramifications for the study of religious history, comparative religion, literature, politics, history, and art history
Analysis English literature Special subjects Christianity
United States
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Transcendentalism (New England)
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Globalization.
Religion -- Influence
Transcendentalism (New England)
Religion
Transzendentalismus
Transcendentalisme.
Oosterse godsdiensten.
SUBJECT Asia -- Religion -- Influence
Subject Asia
Asien
Form Electronic book
LC no. 92024770
ISBN 9780195076585
0195076583
1423764773
9781423764779
1280442514
9781280442513
9786610442515
6610442517
0195360370
9780195360370