Scranton Professor Emeritus, Emerson Scholar Publishes Fifth Book

By Marcus Smith ’27, Student Correspondent

Len Gougeon, Ph.D., had a long and storied career in the Department of English and Theatre at The University of Scranton, where he taught for over 40 years until his retirement in 2021.

Since retiring, he has been far from idle, as he has recently completed his fifth book, which, he says, was “by far the most challenging project of them all.”

The book, “Old England, New England and the Civil War: How a Clash of Cultures Ignited a Global Campaign for Racial Equality and Civil Rights,” is available to purchase on Amazon in paperback, hardcover and digital formats.

It tells the story of the divide and conflict between English and American intellectual elites during the Civil War.

While the Civil War brewed in the United States, major thinkers from both New England and across the pond came into conflict over their ideas about equality. Many leading English thinkers sided with the Confederacy because of their ideas regarding equality and race.

“The British empire stood on a foundation of white supremacy as did the Confederacy. Both maintained a social hierarchy based on class, caste and race,” Dr. Gougeon explained. “The South was essentially an oligarchy ruled by aristocratic gentlemen who resembled their British counterparts.”

Those ideas caused thinkers such as Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin to clash with their New England counterparts such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

That is where Dr. Gougeon’s specialties come into play, as he specializes in studies of Emerson, one of America’s most prominent literary figures and a leader of the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century.

He served as president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and received the society’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2008.

Writing this book was no small undertaking for Dr. Gougeon, as over 10 years of research resulted in an initial draft that was well over half a million words, but he eventually managed to shave it down to a book of approximately 400 pages with 1,200 footnotes.

“The original manuscript was basically a Gutenberg Bible,” he said.

In writing “Old England, New England, and the Civil War,” Dr. Gougeon shows that certain ideas that are considered radical by some today can actually be traced back to the nation’s origins and the declaration that “all men are created equal.”

“I hope they will see that what today is referred to as D.E.I. (diversity, equality, inclusion) is not a new idea. It was ingrained in the nation’s DNA from the beginning. Bringing it forth in our society has always involved struggle,” Dr. Gougeon said.

Dr. Gougeon is the author of “Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery and Reform;” “Emerson and Eros: The Making of a Cultural Hero;” and “Emerson’s Truth, Emerson’s Wisdom: Transcendental Advice for Everyday Life,” among numerous other publications including journals such as The New England Quarterly, American Literature, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, Studies in the American Renaissance, Modern Language Studies and others. His essays have appeared in various collections including The Oxford Handbook to Transcendentalism, Emerson Bicentennial Essays, The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments, A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in Context, Teaching Emerson and others. In 2015, he received the University’s Excellence in Scholarly Publication Award.

During his distinguished career at Scranton, Dr. Gougeon served as a member of the Faculty Senate for 31 years, including as a member of the Senate Committee on Shared Governance and Leadership. He also served as chair of the University Senate and as a member of the Board on Rank and Tenure and the University Handbook Committee.

Dr. Gougeon earned his bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s University Halifax, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.