Ce mémoire démontre que la pratique littéraire de l’écrivain américain Ralph Waldo Emerson s’inscrit dans le sillage de la tradition des exercices spirituels mise au jour par l’helléniste Pierre Hadot et qu’elle permet de penser une modernité insoupçonnée par ce dernier. La production de textes littéraires devient alors une manière d’établir « une relation originale avec l’univers » (cf. l’introduction de Nature). Le premier chapitre explique la spécificité de la spiritualité traditionnelle, où l’écriture consiste à implanter en soi le texte de la tradition. La pratique littéraire de Marc Aurèle, Sénèque et saint Augustin est étudiée afin de montrer comment ils tâchent de vivre conformément à la conception de la transcendance qui est la leur : personnelle chez les stoïciens, institutionnelle chez les chrétiens. Le deuxième chapitre montre comment Emerson renverse le rapport traditionnel au texte dans la vie de l’esprit en arguant que la révélation du Christ est, à l’origine, une expérience personnelle de la transcendance qui n’est pas institutionnalisable. Il se dégage de cette confrontation romantique avec le christianisme un concept de littérature lié au mysticisme et inséparable d’une compréhension « expressiviste » du langage (Charles Taylor). Le dernier chapitre examine l’ascèse littéraire d’Emerson : sa conception antiscolastique du « scholar » est étudiée puis mise en relief avec sa façon d’arrimer sa pratique de la pensée à une conception fluctuante de l’univers. La dernière section porte sur la façon dont son mode de vie expérimental suppose une conception de la littérature en tant que processus. / This master thesis considers how the literary practice of Ralph Waldo Emerson might help us rethink the modern heritage in the tradition of spiritual exercises. The nineteenth century American writer followed the path of this antique tradition that was uncovered by the philosophy historian Pierre Hadot, allowing us to consider anew this tradition within the framework of modernity. It is thus possible to access an unexpected modernity of spiritual exercises, unknown to Hadot himself, characterized by the production of literary texts that convey what Emerson calls, “an original relation to the universe.” The first chapter explains the specificity of traditional spirituality, where writing serves to incorporate traditional text into oneself. It considers the literary practice of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Saint Augustine, who all attempted to live according to their conception of transcendence: personal under stoicism, institutional within Christianity. Chapter two illustrates how Emerson overturns the traditional way of behaving with a spiritual text. His critique of Christian theology shows that the revelation of Christ is, in its origin, a personal experience of transcendence that cannot be instituted. From this romantic dissension with Christianity emerges a theory of literature related to mysticism and in close ties with an “expressivist” conception of language (Charles Taylor). The final chapter examines Emerson’s literary askesis. First explained is the antischolastic conception of the scholar, subsequently showing how his way of thinking is interrelated to a fluxional conception of the universe. Lastly demonstrated is how his experimental way of life relies on a conception of literature as process.

The works of the nineteenth-century American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson continue to be inspiring particularly due to their empowering effect on the individual. It is especially Emerson's concepts of the sovereignty of the individual, the importance of self-definition, the view of life as a transitory flow, and the relationship between freedom and fate which can be practically and usefully applied in the life of an individual. It is possible, then, to understand and evaluate Emerson's works through the practical effects of his concepts, in other words through the prism of pragmatism. Emerson's empowering philosophy can be of use especially to disempowered groups such as African Americans. The Emersonian themes which are to be found in the works of various African-American non-fiction writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West testify to the relevance of Emerson for this minority group. In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son, two African-American novels, Emersonian principles are shown to be of utmost importance for the positive development of the protagonists.

This dissertation demonstrates how the rise of historical criticism in Germany transformed practices of reading, writing, and public address in the related fields of classicism and biblical criticism in a transnational context. In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, writers on both sides of the Atlantic rendered these practices foundational to the goals of self-formation, cultural and spiritual renewal, and educational reform. In this process, Germaine de Staël's De l'Allemagne (1814) played a key role in disseminating new historically informed modes of teaching, preaching, translating, and reconstructing secular and religious texts among Transcendentalists. I show that her cultural study epitomizes crucial characteristics and functions of the historically informed textual practices that Johann Gottfried Herder's works articulated paradigmatically in Germany and which we find refracted in reviews, addresses, essays, and translations by many Antebellum American scholars, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This dissertation argues that in the heyday of radio, religious-radio preachers sought to use their programs to counter the secularization of American culture. Ultimately, however, their programs contributed to secularization by accelerating changes already evident in both the conservative and liberal streams of American Christianity. To reach a vast American audience, radio preachers transformed their sectarian messages into a religion more suitable to the masses, thereby altering the very religion it aimed to preserve. This was one of the unintended consequences of American religious radio. Chapter 2 argues that Harry Emerson Fosdick's ministry contributed to a movement away from Protestant orthodoxy. Radio played an important role in Fosdick's successful effort to blaze a new theological trail for the modern era. Chapter 3 shows that Aimee Semple McPherson's experiential religion had an ecumenical appeal that reached areas across the world. As one of the most celebrated Christian figures of the early twentieth century, McPherson's ministry helped make the American church more accepting of important aspects of secularization. Chapter 4 argues that Walter Maier's ministry encouraged millions of people to believe in a simple orthodoxy. The message he broadcast eschewed Lutheran particulars for the bold proclamation of the basic convictions shared by Christian fundamentalists generally. Chapter 5 argues that Charles Fuller's ministry contributed to the transformation of American religion by defining it primarily in terms of evangelism. His success uncovered a particular mood in America: one tired of the militant fundamentalism of the early decades of the century but not ready to abandon the fundamentals of the faith for theological liberalism. Chapter 6 considers religious radio against the backdrop of the emergence of television as the dominant communication medium in America and draws out implications for religion in the modern age of the Internet. To make religion accessible to large and diverse audiences, radio preachers accommodated their messages in ways suited to the medium of radio. Although religious-radio preachers set forth to advance the influence of religion in American society, their choice to limit theological substance ironically promoted the secularization of the American church.

Ce mémoire démontre que la pratique littéraire de l’écrivain américain Ralph Waldo Emerson s’inscrit dans le sillage de la tradition des exercices spirituels mise au jour par l’helléniste Pierre Hadot et qu’elle permet de penser une modernité insoupçonnée par ce dernier. La production de textes littéraires devient alors une manière d’établir « une relation originale avec l’univers » (cf. l’introduction de Nature). Le premier chapitre explique la spécificité de la spiritualité traditionnelle, où l’écriture consiste à implanter en soi le texte de la tradition. La pratique littéraire de Marc Aurèle, Sénèque et saint Augustin est étudiée afin de montrer comment ils tâchent de vivre conformément à la conception de la transcendance qui est la leur : personnelle chez les stoïciens, institutionnelle chez les chrétiens. Le deuxième chapitre montre comment Emerson renverse le rapport traditionnel au texte dans la vie de l’esprit en arguant que la révélation du Christ est, à l’origine, une expérience personnelle de la transcendance qui n’est pas institutionnalisable. Il se dégage de cette confrontation romantique avec le christianisme un concept de littérature lié au mysticisme et inséparable d’une compréhension « expressiviste » du langage (Charles Taylor). Le dernier chapitre examine l’ascèse littéraire d’Emerson : sa conception antiscolastique du « scholar » est étudiée puis mise en relief avec sa façon d’arrimer sa pratique de la pensée à une conception fluctuante de l’univers. La dernière section porte sur la façon dont son mode de vie expérimental suppose une conception de la littérature en tant que processus. / This master thesis considers how the literary practice of Ralph Waldo Emerson might help us rethink the modern heritage in the tradition of spiritual exercises. The nineteenth century American writer followed the path of this antique tradition that was uncovered by the philosophy historian Pierre Hadot, allowing us to consider anew this tradition within the framework of modernity. It is thus possible to access an unexpected modernity of spiritual exercises, unknown to Hadot himself, characterized by the production of literary texts that convey what Emerson calls, “an original relation to the universe.” The first chapter explains the specificity of traditional spirituality, where writing serves to incorporate traditional text into oneself. It considers the literary practice of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Saint Augustine, who all attempted to live according to their conception of transcendence: personal under stoicism, institutional within Christianity. Chapter two illustrates how Emerson overturns the traditional way of behaving with a spiritual text. His critique of Christian theology shows that the revelation of Christ is, in its origin, a personal experience of transcendence that cannot be instituted. From this romantic dissension with Christianity emerges a theory of literature related to mysticism and in close ties with an “expressivist” conception of language (Charles Taylor). The final chapter examines Emerson’s literary askesis. First explained is the antischolastic conception of the scholar, subsequently showing how his way of thinking is interrelated to a fluxional conception of the universe. Lastly demonstrated is how his experimental way of life relies on a conception of literature as process.

By setting the writings of Etel Adnan, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robinson and Rebecca Solnit into dialogue with those of the New England Transcendentalists, this thesis proposes a New Transcendentalism that both reinvigorates and reimagines Transcendentalist thought for our increasingly intersectional and deterritorialized contemporary context. Drawing on key re-readings by Stanley Cavell, George Kateb and Branka Arsić, the project contributes towards the twenty-first-century shift in Transcendentalist scholarship which seeks to challenge the popular image of New England Transcendentalism as uncompromisingly individualist, abstract and ultimately the preserve of white male privilege. Moreover, in its identification and examination of an interrelated poetics and politics of liminality across these old and new Transcendentalist writings, the project also extends the scope of a more recent strain of Transcendentalist scholarship which emphasises the dialogical underpinnings of the nineteenth-century movement. The project comprises three central chapters, each of which situates New Transcendentalism within a series of vertical and lateral dialogues. The trajectory of my chapters follows the logic of Emerson s ever-widening circles , in that each takes a wider critical lens through which to explore the dialogical relationship between my four writers and the New England Transcendentalists. In Chapter 1 the focus is upon anthropological theories of liminality; in Chapter 2 upon feminist interventions within psychoanalysis; and in Chapter 3 upon the revisionary work of Post-West criticism. In keeping with the dialogical analogies that inform this project throughout, the relationship examined within this thesis between Adnan, Dillard, Robinson and Solnit and the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists is understood as itself reciprocal, in that it not only demonstrates how my four contemporary writers may be read productively in the light of their New England forebears, but also how those readings in turn invite us to reconsider our understanding of those earlier thinkers.

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Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt eine Interpretation von Thomas Paines THE AGE OF REASON (1794) und Ralph Waldo Emersons NATURE (1836) als politiktheoretische Traktate vor, die normative Demokratiekonstrukte entwickeln. Diese Demokratiekonstrukte werden anhand ihrer Parameter vergleichend und historisierend gelesen. Die Annahme ist hierbei, dass sich die normativen Demokratieentwürfe beider Autoren mithilfe der Denkfigur des rhizomatischen Panoptizismus explizieren lassen. Die Dissertation leitet diese Denkfigur anhand von Texten des französischen Poststrukturalismus und auf Grundlage des soziologischen Ansatzes der Surveillance Studies her und erläutert seine Relevanz für das Verständnis und die Verhandlung von Demokratie in den Epochen der frühen Republik und des Antebellum in den USA. Ebenso findet eine Analyse der diskursiven Vermittlung dieser Denkfigur durch das religiöse Vokabular von Deismus, Unitarismus und Transzendentalismus in beiden Traktaten statt. Ein ausführliches close reading legt schließlich dar, wie einzelne Parameter eines rhizomatischen Panoptizismus in den Texten entwickelt, repräsentiert und diskutiert werden. / The present dissertation introduces an interpretation of Thomas Paine’s THE AGE OF REASON (1794) and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s NATURE (1836) as politico-theoretical tracts that develop normative constructions of democracy. At the core of the analysis lies a comparative and historicist reading of the parameters of these constructions. The thesis informing the analysis posits that both normative constructions of democracy can be made explicit with the aid of the concept of a rhizomatic panopticism. The dissertation develops this concept on the basis of French poststructuralist texts and with theoretical approaches from the sociological field of Surveillance Studies in mind, explaining its relevance for the understanding of democracy during the Early-Republic and Antebellum periods in the USA. Furthermore, the discursive mediation of the introduced concept through the religious vocabularies of Deism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism in both tracts receives attention. Finally, a close reading elucidates how the distinct parameters of a rhizomatic panopticism are developed, represented, and discussed in both texts.

Cette étude est une analyse de l’évolution de la notion de photographie pure, dans les discours en Grande-Bretagne, entre 1860 et 1917. Définie comme une image non retouchée ni manipulée, la photographie pure est envisagée en miroir de la retouche et des interventions sur les négatifs et positifs. Une exploration des journaux britanniques a mis en lumière cette préoccupation constante pour la définition et la légitimité des moyens de la photographie. Premièrement, la question des combination printings, de la notion de vérité comme essence de la photographie ainsi que l’aspect des images photographiques sont source de débats. Les discours d’acceptation et de rejet des pratiques de ciels rapportés, de coloriage et de la retouche apportent un éclairage sur la genèse de la retouche. Ces points, corrélés à la présence de la photographie pure dans les expositions, soulignent l’émergence d’une volonté puriste dès les années 1860. Enfin, les discours sur la photographie pure de Peter Henry Emerson et de Frederick H. Evans sont mis en parallèle et contextualisés au sein du pictorialisme, pour mieux en dessiner la définition. Ainsi se relient, dans ces débats sur la pureté, les limites de l’expérimentation et les aspects de la photographie, les figures d'Alfred H. Wall, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robert Demachy, Alvin Langdon Coburn et Alfred Stieglitz. Leurs discours et leurs recherches éclairent un idéal à atteindre, difficilement applicable, un mythe plus qu’une réalité. / This study is an analysis of the evolution of the notion of pure photography, in discourses happening in Great Britain between 1860 and 1917. Defined as a photograph that is neither retouched nor manipulated, pure photography is envisaged in regard to retouching and negative and positive interventions. An exploration of British periodicals has brought to light the constant preoccupation for the definition and legitimacy of the photographic tools. First, the question of combination printings, the notion of truth as the essence of photography and the aspect of photographic images are a source of debate. The discourses of acceptance and rejection of practices such as printing-in clouds, colouring and retouching shine light on the genesis of retouching. These aspects, paralleled with the presence of pure photography in exhibitions, highlight the emergence of a purist aspiration as early as 1860. Finally, the discourses of Peter Henry Emerson and Frederick H. Evans on pure photography are confronted and contextualized within pictorialism, to further its definition. Thus, through these debates on purity, the limits of experimentation and the aspects of photography, the figures of Alfred H. Wall, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robert Demachy, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Alfred Stieglitz are connecting. Their discourses and research put forth an ideal, out of reach, impractical, a myth more than a reality.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:27:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luis Manuel Malta de Alves Louceiro.pdf: 1818082 bytes, checksum: 8786aaf4801d1196495dedbefe6aea8d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-11-11 / The main objective of this Master s Dissertation is to know in an unprecedented work to what extent the mystic of Nature, orador, poet, essayist and Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) may have influenced Pragmaticist and Semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) through his poem, The Sphynx (1841; translated for the first time into Portuguese in Annex 1), which stimulated the latter to offer an answer to the Emersonian enigma in the essay, A Guess at the Riddle (1887-88; translated for the first time into Portuguese in Annex 2), something that, later, according to Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, led to the construction of his admirable Architectonic (The Essential Peirce - Volume 1, 245), about which Peirce himself wrote: this book, if ever written, as it soon will be if I am in a situation to do it, will be one of the births of time (Ibid, ibidem). Therefore, in Part I we will analyze Emerson s poem and will highlight his Main Ideas, those present in his own books, essays and poems - before and after the making of the poem (1841) -, so we can know his intellectual development, in his rich dialog with the Western, Middle-Eastern and Eastern philosophies (that influenced him tremendously) -, once the key-idea behind this Master s Dissertation is grounded on Peirce s other comment on The Sphynx - symbols grow in the essay What Is A Sign? (1894) until we get to Emerson s Epistemology of Moods, his Existential Ethics of Sel-Improvement and his Metaphysics of Process, according to Stanley Cavell, who is responsible for the renaissance of Emerson s philosophical studies in the US in the last three decades. In Part II we will make a structural analysis (Martial Guéroult) of the answer Peirce gave to the Emersonian enigma in his essay, A Guess at the Riddle (1887-88) / O principal objetivo desta Dissertação de Mestrado é saber em trabalho inédito - em que medida o místico da Natureza, orador, poeta, ensaísta, e filósofo transcendentalista norteamericano Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) pode ter influenciado o pragmaticista e semioticista norte-americano Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) através de seu poema The Sphynx (1841; A Esfinge ; com tradução inédita no Anexo 1), que teria motivado este a oferecer uma resposta ao enigma emersoniano no ensaio A Guess at the Riddle (1887-88; Uma Conjectura ao Enigma ; tradução inédita no Anexo 2), algo que levou Peirce, mais tarde, nas palavras de Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, à construção de sua admirável arquitetônica (The Essential Peirce - Volume 1, 245) e sobre o qual o próprio Peirce escreveu: este livro, se alguma vez for escrito, como será se eu estiver na condição de fazê-lo, será um dos acontecimentos da época (The Essential Peirce - Volume 1, p. 245). Assim, na Parte I faremos uma análise do poema emersoniano em que exporemos suas Principais Idéias, aquelas presentes em seus próprios livros, ensaios e poemas - antes e depois da feitura do poema (1841) -, para que possamos conhecer seu desenvolvimento intelectual, no rico diálogo com as tradições filosóficas Ocidental. Médio-Oriental e Oriental (que muito o influenciaram) -, uma vez que a idéia-chave por detrás desta Dissertação está fundada no outro comentário de Peirce ao enigma d A Esfinge - os símbolos crescem no ensaio What Is A Sign? (1894; O Que É Um Signo? ) até chegar à sua Epistemologia de Estados de Espírito, sua Ética Existencial de Auto- Melhoramento e sua Metafísica do Processo, de acordo com Stanley Cavell, que é responsável pelo renascimento dos estudos filosóficos emersonianos nos EUA nas últimas três décadas. Na Parte II faremos uma análise estrutural (Martial Guéroult) da resposta que Peirce forneceu ao enigma emersoniano com seu ensaio, Uma Conjectura ao Enigma (1887-88)