The American encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912 : Victorian culture and the limits of dissent
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The American encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912 : Victorian culture and the limits of dissent
（Religion in North America）
Indiana University Press, c1992
- Other Title
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Buddhism, 1844-1912
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-234) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book focuses on the nineteenth-century debate in America about the nature and value of Buddhism. Thomas A. Tweed examines the impact of Buddhism and shows what happened when a new and transplanted religious movement came into contact with an established and significantly different tradition. The debate about Buddhism highlights the fundamental beliefs and values of Victorian American culture and illuminates the cultural constraints on religious dissent. The Americans who encountered Buddhism included critics, scholars, travelers, and converts from many social classes across the United States. Although many of the Buddhist sympathizers and adherents considered themselves dissenters from Victorian America, Tweed shows that in important ways they were cultural 'consenters.' While they were willing, in their embrace of Buddhism, to discard ideas at the heart of traditional Western religion, they shared with their critics other values which they did not abandon. The story of their attempt to reconcile Buddhism with those values and to make Buddhism consonant in some measure with the dominant culture provides rich insights into the world of Victorian America.
Table of Contents
Forword by Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein Acknowledgments A Note on Foreign Terms Introduction One OThe Seeming Anomaly of Buddhist NegationO: The American Conversation about Buddhism, 1844-1877, and the Contours of Mid-Victorian Culture Two OShall We All Become Buddhists?O: The Conversation and the Converts, 1879-1912 Three Esoterics, Rationalists, and Romantics: A Typology of Euro-American Buddhist Sympathizers and Adherents, 1875-1912 Four OWalking in FairylandO: BuddhismOs Appeal and Cultural Dissent Five Strolling Down Main Street: Cultural Consent and the Accessibility of Buddhism Six Optimism and Activism: Responses to Buddhism, Victorian Religious Culture, and the Limits of Dissent Postscript: Buddhism in America after 1912 Tables Notes Selected Bibliography Index
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