From Nature to Experience The American Search for Cultural Authority

by Lundin, Roger

• ISBN13: 9780742548404
• ISBN10: 0742548406
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-16
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

Roger Lundin traces how pragmatism and its reliance on experience eclipsed nature and religion as the ultimate moral authority. He explores why Americans prize experience as highly as they do, what they build out of it in works of culture and their daily lives, how they manage to make sense of it, and where people might turn when they reach the limits of experience.

Author Biography

Roger Lundin is Blanchard Professor of English at Wheaton College

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Historical Contexts
The Preferences of Eden	p. 17
Delivered to the Dream: Emerson and the Path to Pragmatism	p. 41
Reading the Blooming Confusion: William James and the Theology of Experience	p. 71
Diminished Things: Literature and the Disenchantment of the World	p. 99
Cultural Consequences
Divining Lives	p. 127
Intentional Ironies	p. 153
The Truth Beyond Method: Fiction at the Limits of Experience	p. 177
Conclusion	p. 195
Notes	p. 203
Bibliography	p. 241
Index	p. 255
About the Author	p. 263
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