TRANSCENDENTALISTRANSCENDENTALISMM

ENGL 3060 American ENGL 3060 American LiteratureLiterature

• Regionally located in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts.

• Religious, philosophical and literary movement.

• Began in New England in mid-19th Century.

• Had roots in American democracy.

• Human soul stands above church doctrine and law.

The American The American TranscendentalisTranscendentalis

tsts

• Among Transcendentalism's followers were writers Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman; educator Bronson Alcott; and social theorists and reformers Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing.

• Authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allan Poe also felt the influence of Transcendentalism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-

1882)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)

Emily Dickinson   (1830 - 1886) Edgar Allan Poe   (1809 - 1847)

Transcendentalism…Transcendentalism…• promotes the idea of nature as

divine and the human soul as inherently wise.

• is based on the belief that human beings have self-wisdom and may gain this knowledge or wisdom by tuning in to the ebb and flow of nature.

• links the soul, nature and God.

• is a reaction against Calvinism and 18th Century rationalism.

• emphasizes the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.

• focuses on the hero and his human passions and inner struggles

• places creativity and imagination above formal rules and traditional procedures

• is a preference for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

• Transcendentalists were considered visionaries / futurists in their attitudes toward issues of social protest, elimination of slavery, women's rights, creative and participatory education for children, and labour reform because of the idea of Liberation.

The Rise of Transcendentalism• Inspired by English and European

Romanticism.

• Respect for human capabilities – humanistic philosophy. Against dehumanization and materialism.

• Spiritual inadequacy – harsh, unforgiving Calvinism. Rejection of established religion.

• Interest in foreign literature and philosophy – translations of works now more available: Swedish mysticism (Emanuel Swedenborg), sacred texts (Bhagavadgita, Upanishad, Vishnu Purana, Analects by Confucius), Emanuel Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Coleridge.

Question:Question:1. Based on what you have read

and researched, briefly explain what you have understood about Transcendentalism.

4. “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. . . Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” - Emerson’s Nature

Explain the lines above.