American Transcendentalism

1. American Transcendentalism American Transcendentalism 1830s and 1840s

2. Transcendental – “To Transcend” • a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of • b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of :overcome • c: to be prior to, beyond, and above (the universe or material existence) • (Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online)

3. Transcendentalism Dictionary definition: A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and their contemporaries, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition

4. Characteristics • Spiritual, natural, intuitive • Personal, • Immaterial • Philosophical, • not logical, • learn by experience, • intuition and through nature • Find your OWN truths • Learn not because you should, but because you want to

5. Origins • Has many facets (parts or principles) • Originally came from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant • was defined as an understanding gained intuitively because it lies beyond direct experience

6. What is it a reaction to or action against? • emphasis on the oneness of individual souls with nature and with God • gave dignity and importance to human activity • made possible a belief in the power to affect social change in harmony with God's purposes. • reaction against the increasing dehumanization and materialism of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. • It was also a response to what Emerson and his educated contemporaries felt to be the spiritual inadequacy of established religion.

7. Famous Transcendentalists • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau • Margaret Fuller • Walt Whitman • Oliver Wendell Holmes • John Greenleaf Whittier

8. Ralph Waldo Emerson • Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. • Born: May 25, 1803, Boston • Died: April 27, 1882, Concord • Books: Emerson, The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson • Education: Harvard College, Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School, Boston Latin School

9. the fourth of eight children. His family—descendants of a number of noteworthy New England ministers—prized education, learning and culture. His father, William Emerson, distinguished minister of First Church, Boston, had drawn his congregation with him into Unitarianism. • His father died when he was eight and left family without financial support • Mom worked as a maid, took in boarders, and the family often went hungry • Began career as a Unitarian minister

10. Poor as they were, their family history and social position assured that the Emerson boys would be well educated. Waldo entered Harvard at 14. • in 1832, in a radical departure from common practice, Emerson resigned his pulpit and never served another congregation. He is often thought to have left the ministry because he could not in conscience serve communion, knowing the members construed the meaning of the rite differently than he did. • Led a “conventional” life, stood up for what he believed in and tried to live in a way in which his actions matched and aligned with his beliefs

11. Henry David Thoreau • Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist • Born: July 12, 1817, Concord • Died: May 6, 1862, Concord • Education: Harvard College, Concord Academy, Harvard University • Parents: John Thoreau, Cynthia Dunbar • Nationality: French, American

12. he was sent to Harvard. He did well there and, despite having to drop out for several months for financial and health reasons, was graduated in the top half of his class in 1837. • Thoreau's family participated in the "quiet desperation" of commerce and industry through the pencil factory owned and managed by his father. Thoreau family pencils, produced behind the family house on Main Street, were generally recognized as America's best pencils, largely because of Henry's research into German pencil-making techniques. • About the same time both brothers became romantically interested in Ellen Sewall, a frequent visitor to Concord from Cape Cod. In the fall of the next year, both brothers -- first John and then Henry -- proposed marriage to her. But because of her father's objections to the Thoreau’s liberal religious views, Ellen rejected both proposals. • He opened his own school, but soon his brother John became ill, and after John’s death, Thoreau returned to work in the pencil factory but was soon invited to work as a live-in handyman in the home of his mentor, neighbor, and friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

13. In 1845, he received permission from Emerson to use a piece of land that Emerson owned on the shore of Walden Pond. • From this land Thoreau wrote Walden • He was at once philosopher and naturalist; abolitionist and teacher; scientist and moralist; poet and surveyor; pencil maker and author. It is perhaps the many "lives" of Thoreau • People are particularly drawn to his belief of finding spirituality in nature-a philosophy woven throughout his books and essays. • As our lives become ever more complex, we hunger for simplicity and a communion with nature that Thoreau insists will lead to truth and spiritual renewal.

14. -from Walden • “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front 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, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”