\"Trancendentalism and the current cultural paradigm shift\". A REPORT FROM JESÚS BOLAÑO QUINTERO BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2014

T

hanks to the Eccles Centre European Postgraduate Award,

ASIB 110 Winter 2014

A REPORT FROM JESÚS BOLAÑO QUINTERO BAAS/Eccles Centre PG Award Recipient 2014 Literature and Art (1846); Amos Bronson Alcott thoughts and

I have been able to carry out essential research for my PhD notes as, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and at the British Library. This experience has provided me

Seer: An Estimate of His Character and Genius in Prose and

with crucial material for the development of my project.

Verse (1889), and all the research material about transcendentalism in general, have helped me establish

My research at the British Library focused on the changes

links between transcendentalism and contemporary

in the world of culture after 9/11 which raise doubts about cultural issues. the survival of the concept of postmodernism. Terms and theories like hypermodern (Gilles Lipovetsky), digimodernism

The Atlantic Monthly proved to be very valuable, and works

(Alan Kirby), automodernism (Robert Samuels), altermodernism

like “Brahmanism: According to the Latest

(Nicholas Bourriaud) or metamodernism (Timotheus

Researches” (1869) or “Buddhism or the Protestantism of

Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker) are appearing to

the East” (1869), both by James Freeman Clarke, gave me

explain current cultural events and they show that change

insight into the connections between transcendentalism

is occurring. In both popular and high culture works are

and Eastern thought.  This led me to books like Arthur

being produced that seem to want to recover the

Edward Christy’s The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A

unfinished project of modernity predicted by Jürgen

Study of Emerson Thoreau, and Alcott (1932), Leyla Goren’s

Habermas. This turn is taking place in the light of the

Elements of Brahmanism in the Transcendentalism of Emerson

visions and ideals that come from the philosophy of the

(1977), or Yoshio Takanashi’s Emerson and Neo-Confucianism

nineteenth century and in particular the romantic period.

(2014), which helped me understand more deeply the

The great influence that American culture has on the rest

origins of transcendentalism.

of the world is making the paradigm shift take shape in the light of the tenets of the American transcendentalist

After Summer (1884), Winter (1888), and Early Spring in

movement.

Massachusetts (1881) from Thoreau’s Journal, I turned my attention towards the great influence that

In order to understand this paradigm shift, it is necessary

transcendentalism has on current environmentalist and

to ascertain the roots of such change and the implications

ecocritical studies with works like Andrew McMurry’s

they may have nowadays. My research at the British

Environmental Renaissance: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Systems of

Library broadened my knowledge and strengthened my

Nature (2003), Lawrence Buell’s The Environmental

hypotheses. Emerson’s correspondence with Thomas

Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of

Carlyle; the transcendentalists’ family papers; their

American Culture (1995), or A Keener Perception: Ecocritical

journals and miscellaneous notebooks in the collection, as

Studies in American Art History (2009), edited by Alan C.

well as Emerson’s notes on the books he read and wrote;

Braddock and Christoph Irmscher.

the editions of The Dial; Margaret Fuller’s Papers on

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ASIB 110 Winter 2014 Nicolas Borriaud’s The Radicant (2009) and Altermodern

like to thank the Eccles Centre at the British Library

(2009) support Habermas’s thesis of the recovery of the

and the British Association for American Studies and

unfinished project of modernity. Raoul Eshelman’s

express my deepest gratitude to them for giving me this

Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism (2008) establishes

unique opportunity to gain access to that valuable

a link between the end of postmodernism and his

material, which has been critical for the development of

proposal for a new paradigm through elements like

my research project. 

irony, which are crucial to connect current cultural manifestations with Romanticism in general and

– Jesús Bolaño Quintero

transcendentalism in particular. All that research has provided me with a solid foundation to study the works of Paul Auster and Dave Eggers, and analyse the different ways in which they treat transcendentalism in their books. Typical transcendentalist topics like Eastern thought, nature, the use of irony, self-reliance, sincerity or language (to name just a few), are treated in very different ways by these authors. Some of the books I have consulted to gather information about this have been extremely valuable for my research: Nicoline Timmer’s Do You Feel It Too?: The Post-Postmodern Syndrome in American Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium (2010); Caroline D. Hamilton’s One Man Zeitgeist: Dave Eggers, Publishing and Publicity (2010); Aliki Varvogli´s Travel and Dislocation in Contemporary American Fiction; Christopher Donovan’s Postmodern Counternarratives: Irony and Audience in the Novels of Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Charles Johnson, and Tim O'Brien (2005); or Paul Auster’s Postmodernity (2008), by Brendan Martin. Being able to use the superb facilities of the British Library, having the help of the efficient team there, and having all that material in the same place, has made my research extremely enjoyable and rewarding. I would

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