1 / 14

Transcendentalism and American Literary Realism

Transcendentalism and American Literary Realism. Emerson, Thoreau, and Crane. Transcendentalism Backgrounds. Blake: How did German Idealists believe we could transcend our consciousness of being? Agueda:

garrison-noe
Download Presentation

Transcendentalism and American Literary Realism

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Transcendentalism and American Literary Realism Emerson, Thoreau, and Crane

  2. Transcendentalism Backgrounds • Blake: How did German Idealists believe we could transcend our consciousness of being? • Agueda: Melville was a writer during the transcendentalist period but like his contemporaries Hawthorne and Whitman, he was not one of them. Why is this? • Evan: What does German Idealism assume and what limitations, if any, do the Transcendentalists see in this? Explain.

  3. Transcendentalism Backgrounds • Farid: How might a 19th century Calvinist react to Transcendentalism's ideas about the natural world and the nature of man? • Emily A: How did Unitarian Christianity and William Ellery Channing influence the transcendentalist movement and the transcendentalist ideas of spirituality and God? • Tue: What human quality is European Romanticism concerned with and how does it seek to explore this quality?

  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson “Let us inquire, to what end is nature?” (550) -Nature

  5. Emerson Questions: • Warren: How are the American character, experience, and democracy unique as described by Emerson? • Dustin: According to Emerson, what "creative" way should the individual view both nature and themselves and what practical ramifications does this view have in legal theory? • Alyssa: What are the three points Emerson makes with discourse of idealism?

  6. Emerson: • Jordan: How are the three ways Nature serves humans applied as "equipments for living?" • Christine: According to Emerson, why must we live in the present? How is living in the past unnatural? • Phu: How did Emerson influence Thoreau in his creation of Walden?

  7. Henry David Thoreau -Walden

  8. Thoreau • Carter: According to Thoreau, the mass of men lead lives of: • Melody: How does Thoreau's idea of economizing the self reinforce his view of "slavery" as frivolous? • Krystal: According to Thoreau, what is one way in which an individual can obtain a deliberate self-reflective experience?

  9. Thoreau Questions • Eric: How does Thoreau view slavery of self? • Preston: According to Thoreau, how might the idiomatic phrase "to kill time" take on a more literal meaning? Walden Pond at Sunset

  10. Thoreau: • Ashley: In "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau says, "Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance...til we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is..."(836); how does this quote by Thoreau relate to Emerson's ideal of the "self"? • Amann: On pg. 793 Thoreau says that most of his acquaintances would rather walk around town with a broken leg than with a broken pair of pants. What does Thoreau say is wrong about this attitude?

  11. Stephen Crane • With this opulence and splendor, these creeds, classes, egotisms, that streamed through Romper on the rails day after day, they had no color in common. “The Blue Hotel”

  12. Crane Questions: • Alex: What is the significance of the geographical and cultural origins of the main characters (the Swede, the Cowboy, the Easterner, Scully)? Are the origins chosen arbitrarily or deliberately? • Mason: Draw parallels between Crane's Epic Tradition and any classical epic (Iliad, Odyssey, etc.). How has he adapted the old world style to "modern" culture and the idea of American Literary Realism?

  13. Crane • Matt: What is the significance of the Gambler's actions, after being so built up as an upstanding man? What was his motivation for killing the Swede? • Calvin: What role, if any, do impersonal or "irreducible" forces play in the events of this short story? Describe Crane's commentary on such forces as represented by the Easterner's exclamation, "We are all in it!" (1739).

  14. Crane • Colin: The people staying at the hotel were a Cowboy, a Swede and an Easterner. What is it that Crane was trying to show by this assemblage of people. • Emily: What are dime-store Western and how do they affect the Swede's views about his environment? Are his views realistic? Furthermore, how do these views motivate his actions throughout the story and what does all of this say about the "cultural forms" that manipulate men?

More Related