Theodore Parker and the Problem of Criticism

Abstract

The Transcendentalists still seem to evaporate into “a heap of fog and duskiness” whenever their impact is weighed.1 Consider this special issue’s animus: the jury is still out on whether the Transcendentalists’ worth is, in fact, transcendental. Perhaps it’s because we too rarely reckon with their “burly image-breaker,” Theodore Parker.2 “Next only to Emerson—and in the world of action even above Emerson,” Perry Miller concluded, Parker “was to give shape and meaning to the Transcendental movement in America.”3 Within this world of action, Parker was not at all foggy but volcanic, a rumbling pulpit that made waves in nearly every major issue of the day. Thousands bought his books in America and Europe; 3,000 attended his sermons weekly at the largest free church in the nation; 50,000 attended his lectures annually from Maine to Illinois. Leading reformers counted him as an important ally: William Lloyd Garrison regularly attended his services, Senator Charles Sumner and Horace Mann sought his advice often, and Wendell Phillips nearly became his cellmate after attempting to rescue Anthony Burns from slavery. Frederick Douglass’s first stop in Florence was Parker’s tomb. Susan B. Anthony, Francis Power Cobbe, Caroline Healey Dall, Fredrika Bremer, “Criticism is the easiest of all arts, or the most difficult of all.”