UNIT IV: TRANSCENDENTALISM

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UNIT IV TRANSCENDENTALISM

• Americas First Identity Crisis
• 1840 - 1870

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How it Fits

• Romanticism 1800-1840

Literary Nationalism
Transcendentalism 1840-1870
Realism 1870-1900
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Literary Nationalism (1800 - 1840)

• Established national identity
• Heroes (e.g., Natty Bumpo)
• Anti-heroes (e.g., Tom Walker)
• Local color (regional dialect, setting)
• National identity rooted in
• B. Franklins Virtues and the American Dream
• Puritanism Work Ethic and City Upon a Hill
• Democracy

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Literary Nationalism (1800 - 1840)

• Influenced by European Romanticism
• Truth in absolutes
• Heroes Idealized impossibly perfect
  extraordinary people in extraordinary situations
• Anti-Heroes/Enemies pure evil
• Morality, thus, is absolute
• All good or all evil no gray area
• Emphasis
• Extraordinary people in extraordinary situations
• Often stresses the past
• Glorifies nature its appearance and grandeur

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Literary Nationalism (1800 - 1840)

• 1800 - 1840 Americas obedient schoolboy years

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Historical Context

• Nothing seemed to deter Americas growth in the
  nineteenth century.
• Geographically America was pushing frontiers to
  the Pacific
• Politically it was finding its identity as a
  democratic government divided into three branches
• Socially it was in a fervent state of
  development, constantly creating and developing
  new communities with its ever-expanding
  boundaries.

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Historical Context, cont.

• Such growth and advancement imbued Americans with
  a collective sense of optimism and belief in
  progress.
• Americans knew they had a special place in
  history
• That feeling pervaded everything they thought,
  did, or believed.

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Historical Context

• Policies adopted in this period placed emphasis
  on energy, enterprise and personal achievement.
• Laissez-faire (leave it alone) capitalism
  reigned. (recall reference to speculation in Tom
  Walker unregulated trade). America as a giant
  workshop.
• Emphasis on business, growing personal wealth and
  getting ahead became the underpinning for what
  most American believed was the ideal democratic
  society.

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Historical Context, cont

• Cities grew in size
• Populations scattered and the number of states
  increased
• Growth and expansion gave the nation a firm
  belief in its own progress
• Political climate that elevated self-made men
  like Andrew Jackson instilled the populace with
  faith in the power of the individual to rise
  above his or her own circumstances and fashion
  his or her own place in the world.
• Gave a collective sense of rising above, both on
  a cultural and individual level, created fertile
  ground for an optimistic, if not idealistic,
  American philosophy to take hold

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In the 1840s, America enters its teenage years

• and the country experiences its first identity
  crisis!
• But
• Begins to define a clear American voice

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Enter the Transcendentalists! (Americas
adolescence)
Americas Identity Crisis
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TRANSCENDENTALISM Origins

• Major national issues came together causing
  Americas identity crisis
• Slavery
• Westward expansion
• America half free states / half slave
• Q Would new states be slave or free?
• Exacerbating the issue
• Mexican War 1846-1848 would new territory also
  be free or a slave territory?

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Forerunners

• Puritanism
• belief in God as a powerful force
• belief that each individual can experience God
  first-hand
• Colonialism
• Self-empowerment
• Equality

• Romanticism
• placed central importance on emotions and the
  individual
• emphasized intuition and inner perception of
  truth that differs from reason
• emphasized natures beauty, strangeness, and
  mystery
• emphasized individual expression and artistic
  freedom

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TRANSCENDENTALISM Origins

• Transcendentalism was a literary movement that
  flourished during the middle 19th Century (1836
  1860).
• It began as a rebellion against traditionally
  held beliefs by the Church that God superseded
  the individual.
• 1840-50 movement of writers began to seriously
  challenge American values
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Herman Melville

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Transcendentalism Origins

• Group focuses on reform
• Ties with Unitarian Church (rejection of Trinity)
  though not a religion.
• Centered around Boston and Concord, MA. in the
  mid-1800s (a group of intellectuals and
  academics)
• Still influenced by European ideas and Eastern
  philosophies
• Departure from ROMANTICISM (focus on the
  extraordinary, uncommon, intangible)
• Embracing of REALISM (focus on the ordinary,
  common, tangible)

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Transcendental Beliefs Beliefs

• Basic Premise 1
• An individual is the spiritual center of the
  universe, and in an individual can be found the
  clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the
  cosmos itself. It is not a rejection of the
  existence of God, but a preference to explain an
  individual and the world in terms of an
  individual.

• Basic Premise 2
• The structure of the universe literally
  duplicates the structure of the individual
  selfall knowledge, therefore, begins with
  self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle's
  dictum "know thyself."

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Transcendental Beliefs Beliefs

• Basic Premise 3
• Transcendentalists accepted the concept of
  nature as a living mystery, full of signs nature
  is symbolic.

• Basic Premise 4
• The belief that individual virtue and happiness
  depend upon self-realizationthis depends upon
  the reconciliation of two universal psychological
  tendencies
• The desire to embrace the whole worldto know and
  become one with the world.
• The desire to withdraw, remain unique and
  separatean egotistical existence.

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So.

• Nature
• Individualism
• Moral Enthusiasm
• Feelings

• Is Divine
• Holds the truths of life
• Holds transcendence for man when he can
  communicate and be one with nature
• Is innocence and an escape from the evils of
  society
• Transcendentalists believed individuals could
  transcend to a higher being of existence in
  nature.
• Belief that the transcendent (or spiritual)
  reality, rather than the material world, is the
  ultimate reality

• Rejection of societys beliefs and free thought
• An individual places inner truth above all else
• Fulfillment comes from knowing oneself, not from
  materialism and not through adhering to
  institutions like education, the government, the
  church, even the family.
• Advocates self trust and confidence (truth is
  within us)
• Experience is valued over scholarship.
• God is located in the soul of each individual.
  Finding ones own spirituality will lead one to
  truth
• Simple life (manual labor)
• This truth of existence combines nature, the
  universe and man (oversoul) and is available to
  everyone

• Considered the Conscience of the Nation
• Challenged individuals to question authority
• Encouraged non-conformity
• morality gt legality
• Anti- Aristocracy
• Anti-Slavery
• Pro-Womens Rights
• Quest for Utopia (Brook Farm)

• INTUITION over LOGIC
• The transcendental reality can be known not by
  the rational faculty or logic, but only by
  intuition or mystical insight
• Oversoul a divine spirit that pervades the
  universe and encompasses all human souls (coined
  by R.W. Emerson, author)
• All people are open to this higher knowledge
• Great optimism and faith in men
• Limitless potential of man
• mind/spirit gt body/society

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Wrong is the New Right

• If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
  perhaps it is because he hears a different
  drummer. Let him step to the music he hears,
  however measured or far away. Henry David
  Thoreau

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The Founder of Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo
Emerson

• 1803-1882
• Unitarian minister
• Poet and essayist
• Founded the Transcendental Club
• Popular lecturer
• Banned from Harvard for 40 years following his
  Divinity School address
• in 1835 and writes his first important work
  Nature which describes how humans find God within
  nature
• In the woods is perpetual youth In the woods
  we return to reason and faith.
• Emerson went on to become a famous lecturer
  sharing his transcendental philosophy throughout
  the country. Among his quotable phrases
• Trust thyself every heart vibrates to that iron
  string.
• To be great is to be misunderstood.

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Henry David Thoreau - Practitioner

• If Ralph Waldo Emerson was the philosopher of
  Transcendentalism, Thoreau was its most devoted
  practitioner.
• While Emerson wrote and lectured about
  Transcendentalism, Thoreau tried to live as a
  transcendentalist.
• grew up in a middle class family with a
  significant amount of wealth.
• Also attended Harvard and graduated in 1837.
• A school teacher
• Worked in the familys pencil factory

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Thoreau - Practitioner

• As an independent thinker, Thoreau became the
  head of the Concord Lyceum organizing lectures
  where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• Thoreau eventually worked as a handyman and
  caretaker of Emersons estate while Emerson spent
  long stints studying abroad in Europe.
• From 1841 1843 Thoreau decided to conduct an
  experiment of self-sufficiency by building his
  own house on the shores of Walden Pond and living
  off the food he grew on his farm.
• Thoreau later documented his experiment in his
  famous memoir Walden.
• Famous quotes from Walden
• I went to the woods to live intentionally, to
  suck the marrow out of life.

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Romanticism REALISM Civil War to turn of
the century

• Realism Style of writing, usually prose, in
  which surface appearance is presented in an
  unembellished way.
• In contrast to romance or the fantastic, the
  realist writer also seeks to represent
  experiences that are usual or typical rather than
  extraordinary or exotic.
• Captures ordinary people in everyday experiences
  and settings with almost photographic precision
  and detail
• Represents the common through common language
• Attack upon Romanticism and Romantic writers.

• "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to
  find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual
  or superficial to find the scientific laws that
  control its actions, realists center their
  attention to a remarkable degree on the
  immediate, the here and now, the specific action,
  and the verifiable consequence"

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Transcendentalist Writers 1850-1870
Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet, Essayist, Lecturer
Henry David Thoreau Essayist, Walden Civil
Disobedience
Nathaniel Hawthorne Writer The Scarlet
Letter House of the Seven Gables
Herman Melville Author Poet Moby Dick The
Confidence
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Realism in Literature
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
Edith Wharton
Theodore Dreiser