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American Transcendentalism

American Transcendentalism. Classicism (8 th century BCE-fall of Rome 5 th century: Plato, Homer, etc.) Medievalism (“middle ages” 5 th century-15 th century: Dante, Chaucer) Renaissance (“Elizabethan” 15 th -mid17 th century: Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth)

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American Transcendentalism

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  1. American Transcendentalism

  2. Classicism (8th century BCE-fall of Rome 5th century: Plato, Homer, etc.) Medievalism (“middle ages” 5th century-15th century: Dante, Chaucer) Renaissance (“Elizabethan” 15th-mid17th century: Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth) Neo-Classicism (“Enlightenment” mid-17th-1830: Voltaire, Pope, Hobbes) Romanticism (1785-1860: Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe) Victorianism (1830-1901: Queen Victoria, Tennyson, Brownings) Realism/Naturalism (1860-1914: Flaubert, London, Sinclair) Social Realism Magical Realism Psychological Realism Modernism (1914-1945: Yeats, Lawrence, Faulkner, Pound, Eliot) Post-Modernism (1945-1990?: Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault) Post-Post-Modernism (1990-? Crash, Magnolia) Movements/Periods of Art, Architecture, Music, Literature, Philosophy,

  3. What is a “period” or “movement”? • A way of categorizing/organizing art, literature, and ideas—a label. • Kind of like a “frame” placed around a group of ideas and works and that seem to directly shape and reflect the particular circumstances of a time period. • Assumes every age has its characteristic features (political, architectural, philosophical, aesthetic, cultural, economic, social, sexual, moral, etc.) which are reflected in representative artifacts or creations. • Assumes also that understanding the special features of the time enhances/clarifies/completes one’s understanding of the artifacts (and that an understanding of the artifacts enhances/clarifies/completes one’s understanding of the time).

  4. Think “classic rock” • When was it? Who created it? When did it become “classic?” • Features? • Did it shape and reflect the political, cultural, philosophical, economic ideas of the time? What must one understand about the times to fully appreciate “classic rock?” • No strict conformity; diversity (Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd are all in the “classic” canon), but a distinctness, nonetheless. • Think, too, about changes in the artists. “Come Together” is “classic.” Is “8 Days a Week?” • Is Van Halen “classic?” • Is “classic rock” over?

  5. Less like a precise yardstick that cleanly delineates the distinct beginning and end of an era And more like a wave on a beach that gathers up the receding wave that came before and mixes it all together. A Period/Movement is…

  6. “Age of Enlightenment” Galileo (Italy) and Kepler (Germany):Heliocentrism Isaac Newton (England): Laws of motion and gravity. Francis Bacon (England): Knowledge emanates not from Church or books, but from observation and generalization (empiricism). Rene Descartes (France): the only thing we really know is that we think (“I think; therefore, I am”); therefore, reason (not faith) is the building block for knowledge. Reason and logic good; emotion and “enthusiasm” bad. The universe is orderly, precise, and predictable; society should be, too. What Came Before

  7. Movements develop in response to what came before • Puritanism addressed • Corruption in the church. • Too much power in church hierarchy. • Distant God. • Fears of uncertainty • Enlightenment addressed • Superstition. • Power of church in civic affairs. • Arbitrary God. • Fears of uncertainty.

  8. What kinds of challenges and/or problems might the Enlightenment have presented to people? • Life becomes mechanical. • Application of enlightenment principles: Industrialization. • Devaluing of individual perception and intuition. • “Inspir” ation • Urban development: life moves by the factory whistle and not the church bell. • Disconnect between knowledge and every-day experience.

  9. How do you reclaim “the spiritual” knowing what you know about the power of reason and empiricism to reveal truth? Start with the idea that there’s more than just what’s “out there.” And humans are more than just “tabla rasa” with reason that processes experience. The mind is divine. Need a revolution in/of the human consciousness—a casting off of the “mind-forg’d manacles” (Blake) of imprisoning orthodoxies, traditions, and hierarchies.

  10. People are inherently good; society corrupts them (contrast with the belief that people are inherently corrupt and the belief that an ordered society produces good people). Children, the “uncultivated,” and “primitive” people are especially interesting because they are relatively “unspoiled” by society’s influence. • The individual and his/her “subjective” experience is far more valuable than the group and its shared “objective” facts.

  11. Emotions and impulses are the most “natural” of human manifestations and since that which is human is good, emotions are really good. Poetry becomes “the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility” (Wordsworth). In fact, an individual can be uplifted morally and spiritually by cultivating a greater sensitivity to feeling (e.g. empathy could be a seed for social change). Reason…not so good. “Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling.” (Coleridge) Mysticism, dreams/nightmares, the supernatural, and psychological extremes, instead (Confessions of an Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey). The addition of “strangeness to beauty.”

  12. Nature is the antithesis of civilization and is good. Nature rambles allow for quiet meditation, perfect opportunity to “find oneself.” • The “common man” and his speech are cool. Glorification of the ordinary and humble. • Heroism becomes the individual pursuit of the unattainable: “Less than everything cannot satisfy man.” (Blake). The “desire of the moth for a star.” (Shelley)

  13. What does Walden and “Economy” appear to be? • Necessity/luxury • Clothing? • Food? • Shelter? • Heat? • When does “enough” become “too much” and “not enough”? • Why work? • The wise man….but the fool….. • Freedom/slavery

  14. I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. • What’s he “crowing” about? • Who’s he trying to “wake up?” From what kind of sleep?

  15. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. • Desperate for what? • Why quietly? • True?

  16. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course a al mode….When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. (1879) • Unnaturally hot? Cooked? • And why a la mode?

  17. I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. (1884) • Men have become the tools of their tools (1891). • Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things (1899)….Our life is frittered away by detail (1920).

  18. As for work, we haven’t any of consequence (1921). • The gross feeder is a man in the larva state (1984). • Higher laws? Higher than what? • What did he live for?

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