Transcendentalism

1. A literary movement that started in the early 1800’s. Ask yourself FOUR questions to determine if you are a transcendentalist. Transcendentalism

2. The Four questions of Transcendentalism • Is darkness just the absence of light, or is it a separate thing by itself? • Which is more important and WHY? Fostering goodness, or fighting sin? • Is evil just the absence of good, or is it a separate force? • Do you believe in the devil?

3. What do the questions tell us? • Transcendentalists refuted the concept of evil. Darkness is therefore just the absence of light. • Transcendentalists did not believe in evil people. An “evil” person is just a person whose goodness has not been fostered. The person is good. The world has made him/her “evil.” • “Evil” itself is just the absence of good. There are NO forces of evil out there working against goodness. Therefore, a transcendentalist would never believe in a “devil.” This means that “evil” is our fault for not fostering and believing in everyone’s goodness.

4. What do the questions tell us? • Transcendentalists believe that ALL people are inherently good. If you just left people alone, they’d be fine. Therefore, there is NO NEED to fight sin. Just foster goodness.

5. FOUR PRINCIPLES Communion with nature Intense individualism Self Reliance Intuition Transcendentalist Poet Walt Whitman

6. Communion with Nature • Transcendentalists believed that you could get answers to all the big questions about the meaning of life, what happens after death, everything. • You can do this by observing nature and translating what you see into spiritual truth using your INTUITION. • Everything has great meaning in nature, even a single ant. • "Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

7. Individualism • You can only find truth if you are truly an individual. • You must learn to trust yourself and your feelings. Use your INTUITION. • Forget about society and its rules. • In order to forget about society, you must be self reliant.

8. Self Reliance • If you count on a job for money for food and a place to live, you can’t be self reliant. • Think about all of the things we rely on other people for. Cars, clothes, food, gas… • If you care what other people think… If you worry about breaking the law… you can’t be self reliant. • Transcendentalists tended to live in the woods and fend for themselves.

9. If people are inherently good, what do you need laws for? Transcendentalists believed that there should be NO LAWS. What causes people to break laws? Are we just sinners and law breakers? Or do the laws themselves turn people bad? Ralph Waldo Emerson "Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact."

10. Transcendentalists were Optimists and Idealists • They believed in “seeing” not “looking.”

11. ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISTS • Thought transcendentalists were unrealistic and dangerous. • Felt life and its purposes were inherently uncertain. • Saw nature as INCOMPREHENSIBLE. • Felt that humans were ESSENTIALLY DEPRAVED, and that SIN was an ACTIVE FORCE, not just the absence of good.

12. ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISTS • You had to fight sin. • FEARED that individualism would bring out the WORST in human nature. • Called transcendentalists SELFISH. • Without society and its laws we would be just like animals.

13. Use Writing to THINK • Use writing to THINK about the following questions. Ask questions of yourself in the writing. • Are laws more what stop people from committing terrible acts, or what causes them to act out in the first place? • Can a person with a job, house, family, etc. really be an individual?

14. Intuition Game • READ: “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. • Make a list of 5 fake quotes that sound like Emerson, but aren’t. • Turn them in.

15. The Age of Modernism Everybody Charleston!

16. Victorian Culture A bridge between Transcendentalism and modernism. • 1830-1900 • Based on values of thrift, diligence, persistence, and immense optimism about the progress industrialism would bring – not about mankind’s inherent goodness. • Ideal vision of stable, peaceful society free from sin and discord

17. Core Beliefs of Victorian Culture • The universe was predictable, presided over by a benevolent God, and governed by immutable natural laws. • Humankind was capable of arriving at a fixed set of truths about all aspects of life. • Life could be divided into that which was “human” and that which was “animal”

18. What Made Victorians Human or Civilized • Education • Refinement • Manners • Arts • Religion • Domesticated emotions such as loyalty and family love

19. What Made Victorians Animal or Savage • Any instinct or passion that threatened self control • S-E-X—”a hidden geyser of animality existing within everyone and capable of erupting with little or no warning at the slightest stimulus” • Daniel Singal. • Sex was hidden in Victorian novels. There are a lot of trains entering tunnels, rolling landscapes reminiscent of female bodies, people running down stairs and other images that Freud later determined to be sexually suggestive.

20. Other Victorian Beliefs • In order to create a predictability and order and comfort zone in their lives, Victorians sought also to divide along lines of race, class, and gender, and there was to be no diversion from these divisions. • Charles Dickens is a classically Victorian Writer. Happy endings. Sentimental portraits acceptable for people of character to read. Shocking at times, but not disgusting. • Novels were for “grown up people.” • “Victorian” writers are often overlooked because writing from this period was vastly different in the early period than the late. Dickens  Melville, Dracula.

21. The Advent of Modernism • 1900-1945—Influence of Industrialization and growth of cities • Changed beliefs in all aspects of cultural life—literature, music, painting, architecture, philosophy, scientific study, etc. • A clear reaction to and rebellion against the values of Victorian culture

22. Key Values of Modernism • From art to social policy, Modernists have attempted to bring together what the previous culture tried to keep separate • To integrate the human and the animal, the civilized and the savage, and to heal the sharp divisions Victorians had established in class race and gender—jazz music • Importance of opening the self to new levels of experience

23. James McFarlane’s Stages of Modernist Development • Rebellion—the fragmentation and disintegration of Victorian absolutes • Restructuring—putting the fragments together in a new way. Modernists “make it new.” • Dissolving, blending, merging—what had been separate pieces are now a new and different whole

24. Modernist Literature • Highly influenced by key events of 1900-1945: industrialization and growth of cities, immigration and the Great Migration, World War I • Modernist in form and content: stories become non-linear, non-traditional • More confusing and demanding of the reader

25. Modernist Literature • Disillusionment is a key and almost constant theme • Presence of death continually lingering • “The Truth” can be discovered, but with great difficulty, and it may not be the truth that is sought. • ALIENATION • Sense of estrangement from the self and the external world.

26. The Victorian Ideal--Women • Strictly defined gender role, little to no sexuality expressed, image controlled largely by men

27. The Victorian Ideal--Women • Strictly defined gender role, little to no sexuality expressed, image controlled largely by men

28. The Modernist Ideal—The Flapper • Merging of gender roles in both appearance and behavior • So named because of the style of dance

29. The Modernist Ideal—The Flapper • Merging of gender roles in both appearance and behavior • So named because of the style of dance

30. Victorian Ideal--Art • Predictable, representative, understandable

31. Modernist Ideal--Art • Picasso’s abstraction and Cubism • Dependence on perspective

32. More Picasso

33. This is why he’s a genuis

34. Modernist Music • So, you think Fergie or R. Kelly invented sexually suggestive lyrics? Observe Cole Porter, the king of popular music during the Roaring 20s:

35. You could have a great career,And you should;Yes you should.Only one thing stops you dear:You're too good;Way too good!If you want a future, darlin',Why don't you get a past?'Cause that fateful moment's comin' at last...We're all alone, no chaperoneCan get our numberThe world's in slumber--let's misbehave!!!There's something wild about you childThat's so contagiousLet's be outrageous--let's misbehave!!!When Adam won Eve's handHe wouldn't stand for teasin'.He didn't care about those apples out of season.They say that Spring means just one little thing to little lovebirdsWe're not above birds--let's misbehave!!!It's getting late and while I waitMy poor heart aches onWhy keep the breaks on? Let's misbehave!!!I feel quite sure affaire d'amourWould be attractiveWhile we're still active, let's misbehave!You know my heart is trueAnd you say you for me care...Somebody's sure to tell,But what the heck do we care?They say that bears have love affairsAnd even camelsWe're men and mammals--let's misbehave!!!

36. If saying your prayers you like, If green pears you like If old chairs you like, If back stairs you like, If love affairs you like With young bears you like, Why nobody will oppose! And though I'm not a great romancer I know that I'm bound to answer When you propose, Anything goes... Anything goes! If driving fast cars you like, If low bars you like, If old hymns you like, If bare limbs you like, If Mae West you like Or me undressed you like, Why, nobody will oppose! When every night, The set that's smart Is intruding on nudist parties in studios, Anything Goes. Anything Goes! Times have changed, And we've often rewound the clock, Since the Puritans got a shock, When they landed on Plymouth Rock. If today, Any shock they should try to stem, 'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock would land on them. In olden days a glimpse of stocking Was looked on as something shocking, But now, Heaven knows, Anything Goes. Good authors too who once knew better words, Now only use four letter words Writing prose, Anything Goes.

37. Bibliography Singall, Joseph. “Toward a Definition of American Modernism.” American Quarterly