Cautious Romantics: The Dana Family of Boston as the Interpretive Key to a Larger Discourse

This project seeks to provide a fuller picture of the way that European Romantic texts functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting a group of “Cautious Romantics” that emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition in America between 1800 and the late 19th century. They retained a commitment to a settled social order and embraced the Trinitarian Christianity long since abandoned by the Transcendentalists and their Unitarian predecessors. This program will focus on how the Dana Family functions as a critical lens through which one can view the larger Cautious Romantic discourse.