| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 262 pages) |
| Contents |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- A HISTORY OF TIME -- MY CARNAC AND MEMNON'S HEAD -- CIRCLES AND LINES -- THE WALKING STICK, THE SURVEYOR'S STAFF, AND THE CORN IN THE NIGHT -- ANSWERING THE SPHINX -- INCHES' WOOD -- EXTEMPORANEOUS MAN, REPRESENTATIVE MAN -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX |
| Summary |
"In Above Time, James R. Guthrie explores the origins of the two preeminent transcendentalists' revolutionary approaches to time, as well as to the related concepts of history, memory, and change. Most critical discussions of this period neglect the important truth that the entire American transcendentalist project involved a transcendence of temporality as well as of materiality. Correspondingly, both writers call in their major works for temporal reform, to be achieved primarily by rejecting the past and future in order to live in an amplified present moment. Emerson and Thoreau were compelled to see time in a new light by concurrent developments in the sciences and the professions. Geologists were just then hotly debating the age of the earth, while zoologists were beginning to unravel the mysteries of speciation, and archaeologists were deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs. These discoveries worked collectively to enlarge the scope of time, thereby helping pave the way for the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. Well aware of these wider cultural developments, Emerson and Thoreau both tried (although with varying degrees of success) to integrate contemporary scientific thought with their preexisting late-romantic idealism. As transcendentalists, they already believed in the existence of "correspondences"--Affinities between man and nature, formalized as symbols. These symbols could then be decoded to discover the animating presence in the world of eternal laws as pervasive as the laws of science. Yet unlike scientists, Emerson and Thoreau hoped to go beyond merely understanding nature to achieving a kind of passionate identity with it, and they believed that such a union might be achieved only if time was first recognized as being a purely human construct with little or no validity in the rest of the natural world. Consequently, both authors employ a series of philosophical, rhetorical, and psychological strategies designed to jolt their readers out of time, often by attacking received cultural notions about temporality."--Publishers website |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-257) and index |
| Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
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English |
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Print version record |
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| Subject |
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Views on time
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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 -- Views on time
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| SUBJECT |
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 fast |
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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 fast |
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Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1803-1882 gnd |
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Thoreau, Henry David 1817-1862 gnd |
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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. swd |
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Thoreau, Henry David. swd |
| Subject |
American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
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Time in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
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American literature
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Time
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Time in literature
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Zeit Motiv
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
0826263771 |
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9780826263773 |
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0826213731 |
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9780826213730 |
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1417528303 |
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9781417528301 |
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