| Popis: |
‘From republican to Romantic’ discusses how Enlightenment ideas came under pressure from the dramatic changes in American life during the early republic. Rapid population growth, westward expansion, urbanization, and industrialization tested the limits of Enlightenment thought, while new Romantic sensibilities shaped Americans’ response to their changing political and social realities. A shared concern during this period was the perceived absence of a truly “American” democratic culture, and this fostered efforts to build a variety of new intellectual institutions. The transcendentalists played a central role in trying to create a unifying intellectual culture befitting a new democracy, while the mental and moral worlds of Northerners and Southerners pulled farther apart over the issue of slavery. |
