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Aim #30: What are the main ideas of transcendentalism?

Aim #30: What are the main ideas of transcendentalism?. DO NOW! Read excerpts from Thoreau and Emerson and answer accompanying questions. PLEASE JOT DOWN YOUR ANSWERS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF YOUR DO NOW 1. How are you affected by nature? Do you find comfort in it?

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Aim #30: What are the main ideas of transcendentalism?

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  1. Aim #30: What are the main ideas of transcendentalism? DO NOW! Read excerpts from Thoreau and Emerson and answer accompanying questions

  2. PLEASE JOT DOWN YOUR ANSWERS ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF YOUR DO NOW • 1. How are you affected by nature? Do you find comfort in it? • 2. What is meant by an individual's spiritual side? How to you define it?  • 3. What does it mean to know something intuitively? For example, has a parent or a sibling ever known something was wrong with you without having talked with or seen you? What do we mean when we say "I just know it"? 

  3. (I) Background to Transcendentalists a. The ultimate truth transcends the physical world b. (1840-1855): literature in America experienced a rebirth called the New England Renaissance c. Believed in an intuitive way of thinking as a means of discovering truth and god, not through reason, but through introspection and exposure to nature d. Through their poetry, short stories, novels and other works, writers during this period established a clear American voice 1. No longer did they see their work as less influential than that of European authors

  4. e. Began as a reaction to 1. economic prosperity: message was against materialism 2. Social problems (slavery child labor, materialism, political corruption, American expansionism) f. result: transcendentalists looked at their intellectual and artistic sides to solve these problems (Northeast, primarily Massachusetts)

  5. (II) Who were the Transcendentalists? a. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) 1. nationalist: urged Americans not to imitate European culture, but to create an American culture 2. Wrote essay titled, “Reliance”; advocated individualism and independent thinking 3. 1850s: became leading critic of slavery 4. Famous work Nature (Nature was the source of deep Human inspiration; helps individuals see truth within their souls; genuine Spirituality come through communion with nature)

  6. b. Henry David Thoreau 1. In his work, “On Civil Disobedience”he advocated for: • non-violent protests • disobeying unjust laws (he was arrested for not paying a poll tax that might be used to support unjust war with Mexico) 2. “Walden”: written while living in the woods alone for 2 years; used time alone to observe nature and introspect on “truth”

  7. R.W. Emerson Essay “Nature” 1836 • In the quest for Self-Fulfillment • Individuals should work for Communion with Nature • “In the woods, we return to reason and faith… Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes… I am part and particle of God.”

  8. Thoreau • “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what It had to teach. • And not when I came to die I discover that I had not lived”

  9. (III) What was the legacy of the transcendentalists? a. Transcendentalists left these legacies: 1. Influence Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. through the notion of civil disobedience 2. Influenced the beat generation of writers and artists during the 1950s and the radicals of the 1960s and 1970s where anti-war, anti-government and anti-materialism ideologies existed 3. Meditation and the New Age movement

  10. (IV) Communal Experiments in the mid-1800s? a. Idea of withdrawing from society and establishing an ideal or utopian community b. Examples include: 1. Brook Farm, Massachusetts 2. Shakers: held property in common (no private property); strict separation of men and women A view of Shaker Meeting from 1885. A photographer from the Poland Spring Hotel took this image. The Shakers are seated in the front benches. The spectators and guests from the Poland Spring Hotel are in the back rows.

  11. Communal experiments – continued- 3. New Harmony, Indiana: secular community; founded by Robert Owen; community would solve problems of inequity caused by industrialization and capitalism 4.Oneida: dedicated to the ideas of perfect economic and social equality; children raised communally; all residents were married to all other residents

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