Ryan Tobler and Professor Paul Kerry, History
It is usually literary historians, not religious ones, who address the American Transcendental movement of the early 19th century. Best known for the literary works and figures it produced, Transcendentalism is remembered as loose coalition of forceful thinkers that challenged and enhanced American conceptions of nature, ideal society, and intellectual culture. Some even regard the movement as the vehicle or the expression of America’s intellectual independence – the critical point of departure from derivative (European) strains of thought and the genesis of a distinctively American intellectual tradition. These high estimations make it critical to understand what Transcendentalism actually was, and what kind of formative influence it had on the developing American psyche.
While scholars of Transcendentalism are quick and quite right to point out the literary legacy that emerged from it, they less often acknowledge the religious context from which it emerged. The “Transcendentalists” were, without exception, liberal religionists, and most of them had explicit ties to religion and religious institutions. The vast majority of key figures in the movement were active or former ministers deeply concerned with the spiritual welfare of their communities.
My study examined the relationship of one particular pair of transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederic Henry Hedge. In a more thorough way than has previously been done, it used their correspondence and respective writings to recount their interaction from their youthful days together at Harvard Divinity School though a long and episodic friendship complicated by their diverging convictions about the ministry. Using their dialogue as a window to look on Transcendentalism generally, it showed the enduring religious component of the Transcendental movement and the continuing concern of its leaders with spirituality and spiritual leadership. Re-characterizing Transcendentalism as essentially religious, it argued that elements of the the movement can best be understood as outgrowths of religious evolution and turmoil in New England.
The study was based primarily on unpublished correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederic Hedge gathered from the Houghton Library and the Andover Theological Library at Harvard University. A close reading of these manuscripts suggested that ministry remained a consistent theme in their lifelong dialogue and, by implication, in the Transcendental discourse. In addition to their correspondence, the study incorporated their respective writings and speeches on ministry, including Emerson’s famous “Divinity School Address.” It also integrated life writings and the pertinent writings of both figures that appeared in contemporary periodicals. Assimilating all of these historical materials, the study attempted to construct a historical narrative of Hedge and Emerson’s relationship while also speaking critically to the nature of Transcendentalism in general.
The most immediate outgrowth of this project was its service as a Brigham Young University Honors Thesis. However, it was also presented in one of its forms at an academic venue – the annual gathering of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies (INCS) in Saratoga Springs, NY in April 2009. It served as a graduate school writing sample, and will serve as the genesis for an expanded project exploring (more fully) the intersections between Transcendentalism and New England ministry. This expanded research will be presented at the US Intellectual History Conference in November.