|
|
Article: The need for renewal: Nathaniel Hawthorne's conservatism.(Conservative Minds Revisited)(American writer's )(reminds conservatives to renew beliefs in face of changing society)
- Article from:
- Modern Age
- Article date:
- September 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Intercollegiate Studies Institute Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
IN A CHAPTERIN The Conservative Mind titled "Transitional Conservatism: New England Sketches," Russell Kirk cited John Quincy Adams, Orestes Brownson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as figures in whom the "conservative instinct struggled for successful expression" in a period of rapid innovation that was sweeping aside the ancestral institutions of nineteenth-century America. (1) Confronted with mass democracy, industrialism, and Transcendentalism, these New England conservatives either had to re-ground their beliefs in individuality, hierarchy, and reverence for transcendence on new intellectual foundations, or else they had to devise new social arrangements that might protect ...