7/28/2019 New England Transcendentalism
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http://www.google.fr/#hl=fr&sclient=psy-
ab&q=flowering+movement+in+american+literature&oq=flowering+movement+in+american+literature&gs_l
=serp.12...467336.478973.1.480487.25.21.0.0.0.11.1997.12651.3-
2j0j5j4j3j1.15.0...0.0...1c.7DqNaT4wqDY&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=9db99554750a4439&biw
=1280&bih=629 : flowering movement in american
literature
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https://sites.google.com/site/literaticlub/mei-guo-wen-xue-shi-2/literary-movems-and-writers/new-england-
transcendentalism
New England Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was a movementphilosophical, literary and
socialthat emerged among New
England intellectuals, mainly in the environs of Boston, in the
1830s, underlying the philosophical, literary and
social manifestation. The root impulse of transcendentalism was,
however, theological.[1] puritan Calvinism
had relaxed into Unitarianism, a belief not unlike the Deism of
Franklin and Jefferson in its need to
accommodate 18th century thought to a theological framework.
In 1842, some new Englanders, not quiet happy about the
materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed
themselves a informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met
to discuss the matters of interest to life of the
nation as whole. They expressed their views, published their
journal, the Dial, and made their voice heard. The
club with a member of some thirty men and a couple of women
included Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson, Alcott,
and Margaret Fuller, most of them were teachers or clergyman,
radicals reacting against the faith of Boston
businessman and cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism. The
word transcendentalism was not native to
America; it was a Kantian term denoting, as Emerson put it, what
ever belongs to the class of intuitive
thought.[2] Here the word radical must not be taken, as is
commonly done in our time, to merely an impulse
toward sweeping and violent change, presumably a left-wing
variety. It should be understood more literarily as
meaning a will, to return to the roothere the root of
Christianity; to preach the Holy Ghost. What the young
were trying to do was return to, or rediscover, what they
regarded as a deeper truth of life than the truth of
their liberal fathers. In this sense, the transcendentalists
were revolutionary and reactionary, radical and
conservative, and to understand them is to see the paradox in
history terms.
To see transcendentalism in such terms demands that we must
regard it as a response to the foundational
issues of the age, which a handful of men and women have the
gift of perceiving and analyzing. That ism
transcendentalism represents a complex response to demonstrating
of American life, to the rise of science and
the new technology, and to the new industrialismto the whole
question, in short, of the redefinition of the
relation of man to nature and to other men that was being
demanded by the course of history.
The major features of New England transcendentalism can be
summarized as follows:
Firstly, the transcendentalism places emphasis on spirit, or on
the Oversoul, as the most important thing in
the world. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness,
omnipresent, and omnipotent, from whichall things came and of which
all were a part. It was apparently a reaction to the 18 th century
Newtonian concept
of the universe. In the 18th century, it was generally held that
the world was made up of matter.
Secondly, to the transcendentalists, the individual was the most
important element of society. The ideal
type of man was the self-reliant individual whom Emerson never
stopped talking about all his life; and now this
new notion of the individual represented a new way of looking at
man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist
concept that man is totally depressed, he is sinful and
preserves in sinhood, and can not hope to be saved except
through the grace of God. It was also a reaction against the
process of dehumanization the came in the wake of
developing capitalism.
Thirdly, the transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of
nature as symbolic of the Spirits or God. Thetranscendentalists
theory of nature toward science had crucial consequence and
parallels when he came to face
society and its own problems.
Fourthly, New England transcendentalism was the product of a
combination of foreign influences and the
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