The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism

1. The American RenaissanceandTranscendentalism

2. Search for American Literary Identity By the mid-19th century, people were wondering if America could produce great writing

3. Hawthorne & Melville • Nathaniel 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

4. Declaration of Literary Independence “American Renaissance” • Means rebirth • Describes the explosion of American literary genius

5. Pioneers of American Literature • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Herman Melville • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau

6. Ralph Waldo Emerson • Inspired reform movements to • Improve public education • End slavery • Elevate status of women • Improve social conditions • Inspired utopean projects - plans for creating a perfect society

7. 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

8. Roots of Transcendentalism • Puritans • Jonathan Edwards: God reveals himself through the physical world • Romantics • William Cullen Bryant: death is simply part of the life cycle

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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)

12. Emerson & Transcendentalism • Emerson’s utopian group known as “The Transcendental Club” • Most influential transcendentalist • “Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact”

13. 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)

14. Emerson & Transcendentalism • Optimism & Idealism • God 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”)

15. 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

16. Thoreau & Transcendentalism • Protested Mexican War • Refused to pay poll tax • Radical abolitionist • “Resistance to Civil Government” • Essay on passive resistance • Inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

17. 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."

18. Sources • Lit Book p 206-214, 230-231 • http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/transcend.html • http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ • http://www.google.com