TY  - GEN
N2  - 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.
DO  - 10.1515/9780823242375
DO  - doi
AB  - 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.
T1  - American Metempsychosis :Emerson, Whitman, and the New Poetry /
AU  - Corrigan, John Michael, 
JF  - Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
JF  - Fordham University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
CN  - PS217.S44
LA  - eng
LA  - In English.
ID  - 1477551
KW  - American literature
KW  - National characteristics, American, in literature.
KW  - Self-consciousness (Awareness) in literature.
KW  - Transmigration in literature.
KW  - American Studies.
KW  - Literary Studies.
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.
KW  - American Literature.
KW  - Esotericism.
KW  - Hinduism.
KW  - History of Science.
KW  - Idealism.
KW  - Identity.
KW  - Mysticism.
KW  - Neoplatonism.
KW  - Philosophy.
KW  - Platonism.
KW  - Religion.
KW  - Romanticism.
KW  - Transcendentalism.
SN  - 9780823242375
TI  - American Metempsychosis :Emerson, Whitman, and the New Poetry /
LK  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780823242375
UR  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780823242375
ER  -