Emerson, Thoreau, and the Four Books: Transcendentalism and the Neo-Confucian classics in historical context

My dissertation examines the responses of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to China and the Neo-Confucian classics. During their formative years, both Emerson and Thoreau manifested an intense interest in Confucius and the Confucian classics. They read various translations of the Four Books, wrote commentaries, copied into their journals numerous Confucian quotations, and co-edited one of the earliest collections of Confucius ever published in an American magazine. Thoreau even translated Confucius from a French text, rendering into English a total of ninety-six paragraphs.;Despite this evidence of interest, the significance of the Confucian texts for both authors has not been fully explored. Thoreau's translation has not been published. The Confucian tradition has received only marginal treatment in a few studies on the influence of the Orient in American Transcendentalism. Even so, the prevailing tendency has been to efface to roles these texts had played in both authors' thought and expression.;My dissertation, besides presenting the entire Thoreau translation for the first time, investigates nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural attitudes toward China, their effect on Emerson's views of the country, the Neo-Confucian Four Books and their Western interpreters, Emerson's and Thoreau's knowledge of and access to Confucian thought, and their two Confucian selections for the Dial.;The prevailing tendency has been to view the Confucian tradition as a stagnant orthodoxy having nothing in common with the individualistic spirit of Transcendentalism. My dissertation argues that Confucianism is "no more an unchanging monolith" than Christianity. The Sung dynasty saw the grouping of the Ta-hsueh, the Chung-yung, the Lun-yu, and the Meng-tzu as the basic Confucian texts. All four books stress the goodness of human nature, man's perfection through self-realization, and the unity of Heaven, man, and nature. This emphasis, in contrast to the Calvinistic doctrine that teaches man's fallen state, his original sin, and his salvation through God's determination, drew both Emerson and Thoreau to the Four Books and provided them with resources and inspiration.