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Article: The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Church History
- Article date:
- March 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 American Society of Church History. 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)
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The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance. By Arthur Versluis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 234 pp. $45.00 cloth.
Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Bronson Alcott, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville--these New England authors made up, and now make up, one of the more compelling origin myths of American literature. Characterized by their vatic pronouncements, they were neither modest nor succinct and promoted themselves as the first generation of American writers. Buoyed by a sense of national purpose, they struggled to articulate sentiments and codes of conduct that could ...