Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Dream of the Great American Novel.

Buell's solid grasp of the religiousness of the transcendental literary discipline is a welcome insight. Buell finds that truth and beauty are two sides of the same transcendental coin, and this perception shapes a very fine book.- Catherine Albanese (Church History) Buell's wide-ranging, flexible, catholic approach is a match for the diversity and variety of his materials.- Richard A. Betts (College Literature) Lawrence Buell's Literary Transcendentalism is one of the best studies of the literature of the American renaissance to appear in quite some time; it takes what might well be thought academy-worn subjects and says interesting and suggestive things about them. It is the best book I know on the subject of transcendental aesthetics.- Francis Murphy (New England Quarterly)

• IntroductionPart I. Background and General Principles1. The Emergence of the Transcendentalist Aesthetic from American Unitarianism2. Transcendentalist Literary Method: Inspiration versus CraftsmanshipPart II. The Living Word3. From Conversation to Essay4. From Sermon to ScripturePart III. Word and World: Nature as a Model for Literary Form5. Emerson and the Idea of Microcosmic Form6. Catalogue Rhetoric7. Thoreau and the Literary Excursion8. Thoreau's A Week9. Ellery Channing: The Major Phase of a Minor PoetPart IV. The First Person10. Transcendentalist Self-Examination and Autobiographical Tradition11. Emerson and Thoreau: Soul versus Self12. Transcendental Egoism in Very and WhitmanIndex

Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Dream of the Great American Novel.

Buell's solid grasp of the religiousness of the transcendental literary discipline is a welcome insight. Buell finds that truth and beauty are two sides of the same transcendental coin, and this perception shapes a very fine book.- Catherine Albanese (Church History) Buell's wide-ranging, flexible, catholic approach is a match for the diversity and variety of his materials.- Richard A. Betts (College Literature) Lawrence Buell's Literary Transcendentalism is one of the best studies of the literature of the American renaissance to appear in quite some time; it takes what might well be thought academy-worn subjects and says interesting and suggestive things about them. It is the best book I know on the subject of transcendental aesthetics.- Francis Murphy (New England Quarterly)

• IntroductionPart I. Background and General Principles1. The Emergence of the Transcendentalist Aesthetic from American Unitarianism2. Transcendentalist Literary Method: Inspiration versus CraftsmanshipPart II. The Living Word3. From Conversation to Essay4. From Sermon to ScripturePart III. Word and World: Nature as a Model for Literary Form5. Emerson and the Idea of Microcosmic Form6. Catalogue Rhetoric7. Thoreau and the Literary Excursion8. Thoreau's A Week9. Ellery Channing: The Major Phase of a Minor PoetPart IV. The First Person10. Transcendentalist Self-Examination and Autobiographical Tradition11. Emerson and Thoreau: Soul versus Self12. Transcendental Egoism in Very and WhitmanIndex