The Golden Age of the Classics in America by Carl Richard, Part VII (Ad Navseam, Episode 186)

This one is a Thoreau-back! After a brief hiatus the boys are back in town following sojourns in Greece (Jeff) and South Africa (Dave). It’s also time for our annual “4th of July”(ish) episode—so we return to Carl Richard’s masterpiece, The Golden Age of Classics in America. This time the guys take a look at the era of Romanticism and the place the Classics held amongst America’s romantics and transcendentalists. Here we see a shift away from the empiricism of Aristotle toward the inner “mysticism” of Plato and a view that the ancients should not be models to be slavishly copied, but rather taken as representative of a spirit or nature to imitate, or by which to be inspired. So get down to the lake, get in that cabin, light that lantern and get your contemplation on.