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 “4^th 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.