Transatlantic Transcendentalism: Coleridge, Emerson, and Nature 9780748681372

Citation preview

TRANSATLANTIC TRANSCENDENTALISM

EDINBURGH STUDIES IN TRANSATLANTIC LITERATURES Series Editors: Susan Manning and Andrew Taylor Modern global culture makes it clear that literary study can no longer operate on nation-based or exceptionalist models. In practice, American literatures have always been understood and defined in relation to the literatures of Europe and Asia. The books in this series work within a broad comparative framework to question place-based identities and monocular visions, in historical contexts from the earliest European settlements to contemporary affairs, and across all literary genres. They explore the multiple ways in which ideas, texts, objects and bodies travel across spatial and temporal borders, generating powerful forms of contrast and affinity. The Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures series fosters new paradigms of exchange, circulation and transformation for transatlantic literary studies, expanding the critical and theoretical work of this rapidly developing field. Titles in the series include: Ethnicity and Cultural Authority: From Arnold to Du Bois, Daniel G. Williams Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture, Michèle Mendelssohn American Modernism’s Expatriate Scene: The Labour of Translation, Daniel Katz The Dandy in Irish and American Southern Fiction: Aristocratic Drag, Ellen Crowell Philanthropy in British and American Fiction: Dickens, Hawthorne, Eliot, and Howells, Frank Christianson Transatlantic Women’s Literature, Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson Cultural Authority in the Age of Whitman: A Transatlantic Perspective, Günter Leypoldt Mercenaries in British and American Literature, 1790–1830: Writing, Fighting, and Marrying for Money, Erik Simpson Spanish America and British Romanticism, 1777–1826: Rewriting Conquest, Rebecca Cole Heinowitz Transnationalism in Practice: Essays on American Studies, Literature and Religion, Paul Giles South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970–2010, Ruth Maxey Atlantic Citizens: Nineteenth-Century American Writers at Work in the World, Leslie Elizabeth Eckel Transatlantic Avant-Gardes: Little Magazines and Localist Modernism, Eric White Nineteenth-Century US Literature in Middle Eastern Languages, Jeffrey Einboden Transatlantic Transcendentalism: Coleridge, Emerson, and Nature, Samantha C. Harvey Forthcoming Titles: Emily Dickinson and her British Contemporaries: Victorian Poetry in Nineteenth-Century America, Páraic Finnerty Visit the Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures web site at www.​euppublishing.​com/​series/​estl

TRANSATLANTIC TRANSCENDENTALISM COLERIDGE, EMERSON, AND NATURE ◆ ◆ ◆

SAMANTHA C. HARVEY

© Samantha C. Harvey, 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.​euppublishing.​com Typeset in 11/13 Baskerville MT by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 8136 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 8137 2 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 8138 9 (epub) The right of Samantha C. Harvey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Susan Manning (1953–2013), one of the founding editors of Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures, was committed to the exchange of ideas across languages, cultures and nations. Indeed an expansive intellectual generosity characterised her entire academic career, one that has been cut all too short. The Series is a testament to her work and contributes to her legacy as an outstanding scholar, a supportive colleague and a good friend. Andrew Taylor

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvi Abbreviationsviii 1 2 3 4

Transatlantic Transcendentalism Coleridge and Boston Transcendentalism Nature: Philosophy and the “Riddle of the World” The Landing Place: “Distinguishing without Dividing” and Coleridge’s Method 5 Humanity: “Art is the Mediatress, The Reconciliator of Man and Nature” 6 Spirit: “An Influx of the Divine Mind” 7 Emerson’s Nature: Coleridge’s Method and the Romantic Triad 8 Coleridge and Vermont Transcendentalism

1 24 40 54 76 95 119 141

Notes164 Bibliography197 Index210

Acknowledgments

Transatlantic Transcendentalism took shape over many long years, and I am so very grateful to the mentors, colleagues, friends, and family who made this book possible. Thanks are due to Lawrence Buell, who first suggested pursuing the topic of Coleridge and Emerson for my undergraduate thesis, as well as Alan Hodder and Richard Niebuhr for their encouragement and guidance during those very earliest stages. I am deeply grateful to John Beer: his profound knowledge of Coleridge was formative for me, and his comments on my doctoral dissertation and this manuscript were invaluable. Jim Engell has enriched this book in every way possible, through his inspiring scholarship, his mentorship and friendship, as well as his insightful suggestions at several different stages of this book’s evolution. Thanks to Susan Manning and Andrew Taylor, the editors of the Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures series at Edinburgh University Press; I am thrilled to be part of this ground-breaking series. Many conversations have enriched this book, and I am especially grateful to Richard Brantley, Laura Walls, Richard Gravil, David Vallins, Graham Davidson, Anthony Harding, Kevin Hutchings, Martin Bickman, Anya Taylor, and Bob Scholnick for their thoughts and guidance. I greatly appreciate Jim McKusick’s mentorship and sage comments. I am indebted to my colleagues at BSU, especially Steven Olsen-Smith, Tom Hillard, Mac Test, Steve Crowley, Ann Campbell, and Sara Fry, for sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge. I owe so much to Rochelle Johnson, a kindred spirit who has given me so much support and inspiration. Thanks are due to Chris Gair, editor of Symbiosis: A Journal of AngloAmerican Literary Relations, for permission to publish a revised version of “Coleridge’s American Revival: James Marsh, John Dewey, and the

Acknowledgments  [ vii ­

Legacy of Vermont Transcendentalism” as Chapter 8. I would also like to thank Joel Pace for his excellent editorial commentary on that article, and to all those involved in the Symbiosis journal and conferences, which have so immeasurably enriched the field of transatlantic studies. Jeffrey Marshall and Sylvia Bugbee at the University of Vermont Special Collections and the staff at Houghton Library, Harvard University were most helpful with the manuscript materials for this book, and I am grateful for their permission to quote from materials in their holdings. My research assistants, Eric Austin and Jessica Duffy, have been a great help, and special thanks are due to Jessica Nasman, who went far beyond the call of duty in the final stages of preparing the manuscript. The College of Arts and Sciences and the Arts and Humanities Institute Fellowship at Boise State University provided essential leave time and research funds to complete the book. The support of my family has nourished me at every stage of this long process: thanks to Barbara, Dermot, Emily, and Julian. Thank you, Silvino, por estar sempre me apoiando, and Delphi and Leo, for lighting up my days.

Abbreviations

AR BL CC

CL CN

CWE EL

F J

S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer, CC 9 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, 2 vols., CC 7 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, gen. ed. Kathleen Coburn, associate ed. Bart Winer, 16 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969–2002). Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956–71). The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, eds. Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen, and Anthony John Harding, 5 vols. in 10 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957–2002). The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 9 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971–2011). The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. Stephen E. Whicher, Robert E. Spiller, and Wallace E. Williams, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959–72). S. T. Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara Rooke, 2 vols., CC 4 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. Edward Waldo

­

Abbreviations  [ ix Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, 10 vols. (Boston and New York: Riverside Press, 1909–14). JMN The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. William H. Gilman et al., 16 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960–82). LE The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, eds. Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor Tilton, 10 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939–95). Lects 1795 S. T. Coleridge, Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, eds. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann, CC 1 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971). Lects 1808–1819 S. T. Coleridge, Lectures 1808–1819: On Literature, ed. R. A. Foakes, 2 vols., CC 5 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). LS S. T. Coleridge, Lay Sermons, ed. R. J. White, CC 6 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972). M S. T. Coleridge, Marginalia, ed. George Whalley, 3 vols., CC 12 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). PL S. T. Coleridge, Lectures 1818–1819: On the History of Philosophy, ed. J. R. de J. Jackson, CC 8 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). PW S. T. Coleridge, Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays, 6 vols., CC 16 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). SW S. T. Coleridge, Shorter Works and Fragments, eds. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson, 2 vols., CC 11 (London and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

THE HOUGHTON LIBRARY

f.

7

f.

I

~·

) f;

At.:,_,

I·

/ZO

Tr-·~~ l

(,

ll· 147> 11 H