Everett Emerson and Olaf Hansen discuss the nineteenth-century American philosophical and literary phenomenon known as transcendentalism through the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and others. What are the characteristics of American transcendentalism? How did these characteristics evolve and how do they continue into the 1980s?
At this time of this interview, Emerson was professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hansen, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1983-84), was professor of American studies at the University of Frankfurt.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
