The American Renaissance

andTranscendentalism

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By the mid-19th century, people were wondering if America could produce great writing

Search for American Literary Identity

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Hawthorne & MelvilleNathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville became friends

Saw a dark side to human existence: sought to record this aspect of human nature in their works

Melville wrote a patriotic essay urging Americans to create their own literary identity

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Declaration of Literary Independence

“American Renaissance”- Means rebirth- Describes the explosion of American literary genius

Pioneers of American Literature

Nathaniel HawthorneHerman MelvilleRalph Waldo EmersonHenry David Thoreau

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Ralph Waldo EmersonInspired reform movements to

Improve public educationEnd slaveryElevate status of womenImprove social conditions

Inspired utopean projects - plans for creating a perfect society

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Transcendentalism Transcend: to exist above and apart from the material world

By meditation, by communing with nature, and through work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty, goodness, and truth

PuritansJonathan Edwards: God reveals himself through the physical world

RomanticsWilliam Cullen Bryant: death is simply part of the life cycle

Roots of Transcendentalism

A Transcendentalist’s View of the World

Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul. Each individual soul is made up of the same stuff as the universal soul (kind of like the idea of The Force in Star Wars)

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A Transcendentalist’s View of the World

The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world (the spiritual world is simply a reflection of the natural world and vice-versa)

People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or their own souls

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A Transendentalist’s View of the World

Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition (like Romanticism, the individual is the most important)

Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality (like Romanticism)

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Emerson & Transcendentalism

Emerson’s utopian group known as “The Transcendental Club”

Most influential transcendentalist

“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact”

Emerson & Transcendentalism

Intuition over logic Intuition = our capacity to know things immediately through emotions rather than reasoning

Contrasts with rational thinking of someone like Benjamin Franklin

Opposed deism (the idea that the universe was rationally designed by divinity who endowed humanity with reason)

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Emerson & Transcendentalism

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Optimism & IdealismGod can be found directly in nature and the individual - discover this, and you will find meaning in life

Natural events can be explained on a spiritual level (think “Thanatopsis”)

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Thoreau & Transcendentalism

Stayed secluded in a cabin at Walden Pond in Massachusetts to rediscover the grandeur and heroism of a simple life led close to nature

Wrote in a style that imitated nature

Walden is one of the most well-known works produced in America

Thoreau & Transcendentalism

Protested Mexican WarRefused to pay poll taxRadical abolitionist“Resistance to Civil Government”Essay on passive resistanceInspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau & Transcendentalism

“I should have told them at once that I was a Transcendentalist - that would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations."

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SourcesLit Book p 206-214, 230-231http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/transcend.html

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/

http://www.google.com