American metempsychosis [[electronic resource] ] : Emerson, Whitman, and the new poetry / / John Michael Corrigan

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910788679603321
• Autore: Corrigan John Michael
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, : Fordham University Press, 2012
• ISBN: 9786613888860; 0-8232-4236-6; 0-8232-4237-4; 1-283-57641-4; 0-8232-4662-0
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (256 p.)
• Disciplina: 810.9/353
• Soggetti: American literature - 19th century - History and criticism; National characteristics, American, in literature; Self-consciousness (Awareness) in literature; Transmigration in literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Metempsychotic Mind -- 2. The Double Consciousness -- 3. Reading the Metempsychotic Text -- 4. Writing the Metempsychotic Text -- 5. The New Poetry -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: The “transmigration of souls is no fable. I would it were, but men and women are only half human.” With these words, Ralph Waldo Emerson confronts a dilemma that illuminates the formation of American individualism: to evolve and become fully human requires a heightened engagement with history. Americans, Emerson argues, must realize history’s chronology in themselves—because their own minds and bodies are its evolving record. Whereas scholarship has tended to minimize the mystical underpinnings of Emerson’s notion of the self, his depictions of “the metempsychosis of nature” reveal deep roots in mystical traditions from Hinduism and Buddhism to Platonism and Christian esotericism. In essay after essay, Emerson uses ; metempsychosis as an open-ended template to understand human development. In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman transforms Emerson’s conception of metempsychotic selfhood into an expressly poetic event. His vision of transmigration viscerally celebrates the poet’s ability to assume and live in other bodies; his American poet seeks to incorporate the entire nation into his own person so that he can speak for every man and woman.