religions Article Christian Conversion, the Double Consciousness, and Transcendentalist Religious Rhetoric Alan Hodder Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, Hampshire College, 893 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002, USA;
[email protected] Received: 13 June 2017; Accepted: 18 August 2017; Published: 24 August 2017 Abstract: Despite the theological gulf that separated the Transcendentalists from their Puritan predecessors, certain leading Transcendentalists—Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau among them—often punctuated their writings, published and private, with literary representations of dramatic episodes of spiritual awakening whose rhetorical structure sometimes betrays suggestive parallels with traditional, recognizably Christian, forms of conversion rhetoric. While all of these Transcendentalists clearly showcase representations of dramatic religious experience in their work, this reliance on Christian rhetorical patterns is most obvious in the early writings of Emerson and Fuller. Thoreau’s constructions reflect little ostensible Christian influence, yet even here, thematic continuities with earlier forms of religious self-expression are discernible. Keywords: Transcendentalism; religious experience; religious rhetoric; William James; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Jones Very; Margaret Fuller; Henry David Thoreau 1. Introduction In the December 1940 issue of The New England Quarterly there appeared for the first time Perry Miller’s famous and famously controversial essay, “From Edwards to Emerson.” Here, extending the implications of his monumental