The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism
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Transcript of The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism
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