The Literature Network - The wrath of Ahab; or, Herman Melville meets Gene Roddenberry

The wrath of Ahab; or, Herman Melville meets Gene Roddenberry

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From: Journal of American Culture
Date: 19970401
Author:Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds

April Selley writes in "Transcendentalism in Star Trek: The Next Generation" of the second ST series' prevailing ethos:

"Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" Ralph Waldo Emerson asks in his quintessentially American manifesto of Transcendentalism, the essay Nature. "Why not, indeed?" seems to be the answer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which embodies Emerson's philosophy of optimism.... Above all else, Star Trek: The Next Generation suggests that order comes from Emersonian self-reliance in harmony with the goodness of the cosmos....

The Emersonian ...

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