Romanticism and Transcendentalism 1830-1865 1840-1855

1. Romanticism and Transcendentalism 1830-1865 1840-1855

2. Romanticism – an artistic movement that dominated Europe and American in the 18th and 19th Centuries. • It was in direct opposition to The Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. • Romantic writers elevated the imagination over reason and intuition over fact. • It was a revolt against the restraints of classicism and formalism. • Traditional literary forms, mattered much less than inspiration, enthusiasm, and emotion. • Romantics believed that good literature should have heart, not rules. • The Romantics reveled in nature and its wild aspect: • Nature for itself, for beauty • Nature as source for the knowledge of the primitive. • Nature as refuge. • The literature often accented the fantastic aspects of human experience.

3. “Transcend” • Meaning to live on a level above and beyond the common or the physical. • A blend that was romantic, intuitive, mystical, and consistently easier to recognize than to explain. • American transcendentalism drew on other ideals and thinkers • German philosopher – Immanuel Kant • Greek philosopher Plato • French mathematician Pascal • Anti-materialism of Buddhism • British Romantic writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth – Lyrical Ballads

4. Transcendentalists departed radically from their rationalist predecessors in their approach to the nature of knowledge and human understanding. A system of thought which developed from Romanticism.Like Romanticism, it included:A focus on the individualPassionate idealismA love of nature, nature is symbolicAn 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. The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self - all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle's dictum "know thyself." The belief that individual virtue and happiness depend upon self-realization -Encompasses a range of beliefs whose specific principles depend on the individual writer or thinker.

5. “Philosophy” • “philo”—greek meaning “love” • “soph”—greek meaning “wisdom” Philosophy is the love and pursuit of knowledge.

6. “Intuition” • “The immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process" [Oxford English Dictionary]. • Going with your “gut reaction”.

7. Transcendentalists tried to create a distinctly “American” literature and intellectual activity.

8. Transcendentalist Basic Beliefs

9. *We transcend by learning from and living in harmony with nature.*We transcend as individuals or rise above the lower animalistic impulses of life (animal drives) and moves from the rational to a spiritual realm.*Everyone is capable of transcending.*After transcending, we will want to do the right and moral thing.

10. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe, and in an individual can be found the clues to nature, history, spirituality, and pretty much everything else.

11. 2. All knowledge begins with self-knowledge.

12. 3.   Individual virtue and happinessdepend uponself-realization. a.     This requires people to come to terms with two tendencies:                        i. A desire to embrace the whole world. ii. A desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate.

13. 4. “Knowing yourself” and “studying nature” is the same activity because your mood affects your understanding or interpretation of events.

14. 7. A God can be found in both nature and humannature.

15. Emphasis should be placed on the here and now.

17. Important Transcendentalists

18. Ralph Waldo Emerson o       leader of the transcendentalists o       began as a Unitarian minister o       traveled overseas; met some of the famous British romantics o       settled in Concord, Massachusetts o       known as a lecturer and essayist: “Nature,” “The American Scholar,” “Self-Reliance,” the poem “Concord Hymn”

19. Henry David Thoreau o       took Emerson’s beliefs and lived them o       lived at Walden Pond (on Emerson’s property) from 1845-1847 o       1849: Spent a night in jail rather than pay taxes to support the Mexican War o       wrote Walden from his journal entries (1854—sold 7 copies) oWalden: living life on a higher plane—a spiritual rather than a material existence o       wrote “Plea for Captain John Brown” and “(On the Duty of) Civil Disobedience” o       both Gandhi and Martin Luther King attribute their movements to Thoreau