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THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS. Information from “American Transcendentalism,” www.guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/ campbell/enl311/amtrans.htm by James Vineyard Sachse High School ELA Department. WHAT IS TRANSCENDENTALISM?. 1830s-1840s Philosophical movement Reflected in literature

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THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

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  1. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS Information from “American Transcendentalism,” www.guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/ campbell/enl311/amtrans.htm by James Vineyard Sachse High School ELA Department

  2. WHAT IS TRANSCENDENTALISM? • 1830s-1840s • Philosophical movement • Reflected in literature • Unitarian: the soul of the individual is “identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.”

  3. SOURCES OF THE MOVEMENT • Reaction to Calvinism, which stated that man is essentially evil, in need of salvation, and his afterlife is predetermined • Reaction to Deism: the idea that God is uninterested in the affairs of man • Reaction to rationalism: the idea that all events/phenomena can be explained

  4. CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM • Perception is more important than reason • Microcosm and Macrocosm: Each part of nature contains all of nature within it • Nature as a symbol: all natural things represent something spiritual • Universal soul or “Oversoul:” "Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related."

  5. CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM • Essentially, man is good and will aspire to do good • Society causes the downfall of mankind • Optimistic: good things happen because of the influence of man

  6. AUTHORS • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau • Margaret Peabody • Influenced by Transcendentalism: • Walt Whitman • Emily Dickinson • Frederick Douglass • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  7. FAMOUS WORKS • The Dial • Transcendentalist magazine/publication • Edited by Emerson • Nature—a book of essays by Emerson • Walden—a book of reflections by Thoreau

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