Book Description

As Samantha C. Harvey demonstrates, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's thought galvanized Emerson at a pivotal moment in his intellectual development in the years 1826-1836, giving him new ways to harmonize the Romantic triad of nature, spirit, and humanity. Emerson did not think about Coleridge: he thought with Coleridge, resulting in a unique case of assimilative influence. In addition to examining his specific literary, philosophical, and theological influences on Emerson, this book reveals Coleridge's centrality for Boston Transcendentalism and Vermont Transcendentalism, a movement which profoundly affected the development of modern higher education, the national press, and the emergence of Pragmatism.