Transcendentalism & Dark Romanticism

1. Transcendentalism&Dark Romanticism By Yawen Lin and Laurie Kwok 2nd period PDP English II

2. Transcendentalism • Everything is a reflection of God: - People are inherently without sin • Contemplating Nature will allow you to transcend the real world and to a higher, more spiritual level:- Nature is the closest to God whilst society keeps people from a higher spiritual level • A person’s intuition can lead to contemplation of God • Individualism and self-reliance is better than tradition and following others • Emotions and natural feelings are more valuable than book knowledge

3. Transcendentalist Authors / Poets • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): an American essayist, poet, and author who focuses heavily on individualism. Works include: “Essays: First/Second Series” and “Representative Men” • Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): an American author, poet, philosopher, and naturalist who focuses heavily on both individualism and self-reliance. Works include: “Resistance to Civil Government” and “Walden”

4. Dark Romanticism • Emphasizes human faults and proneness to sin and self-destruction • Explored the conflict between good and evil, the psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness in the human mind • Valued intuition over logic and reason • Believed that spirituality lie behind the masks of nature • Saw the blankness of horror and evil

5. Dark Romantic Authors / Poets • Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): an American poet, author, and literary critic who focuses on tales on mystery and ghastly atmosphere. Works include: “The Raven”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. • Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): an American novelist and short story writer who focuses on the inherent evil and sin of humanity. Works include: The Scarlet Letter, “Twice Told Tales”, and The House of the Seven Gables.

6. Transcendentalist or Dark Romantic? Can you guess? Explain why. D;< • I was sick - sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence - the dread sentence of death - was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution - perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges.

7. Think for a moment. Fools. Good? Evil? Neither? Optimism or Pessimism? Why? • AT A CERTAIN season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it- took everything but a deed of it-took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk- cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on.

8. Have the Gods forsaken you Yet? Have you become one with (mother Russia) Nature? How? • When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, — however neglected in the passing, — have a grace in the past. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. The soul will not know either deformity or pain. If, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might.

9. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT NATURE HAS done for us? CHERISH IT. LIVE IT. • “Shall we never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.”  • “In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.”  • “I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.”  • “It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.”  • “To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.” 

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