美国文学Transcendentalism.ppt

content Time: 1830s---the out break of the Civil War, the summit of the American Romanticism. Definition Major Doctrines Leading figures The importance: it inspired a whole new generation of famous authors and pushed the American literature into a flourishing period. What is Transcendentalism? The publication of Nature (1836) marked the beginning of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism. “What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is idealism; idealism as appears in 1842” (Emerson) Knowledge can be obtained through mental process, apart from experiences Doctrines of Transcendentalism 1) The most important thing in the universe is spirit, or the Oversoul. Compare: ● the 18th century Newtonian concept ● mechanization and commercialization of life; ● craze for monetary success and material possession, neglect of spiritual improvement 2) The Transcendentalists stress the importance of the individual. “The world is nothing, the man is all”; Compare: ● The Calvinist concept of man ● The dehumanization of man in the process of industrialization 3) nature as symbolic of God. Nature is the garment of the Oversoul. “the atmosphere was made…to give man the perpetual presence of the sublime…the remembrance of the city of God” Compare: the 18th century view about nature--- Nature was purely made up of matter. It was operating according to natural law. Emerson Born in Boston to a clerical tradition; Harvard (1817) A Unitarian minister (1826) travel around Europe (1832) Nature (1836) Died in 1882 Emersons Works Nature , the Bible of Transcendentalism “The American Scholar”, regarded as “Declaration of Intellectual Independence” “The Poet”, the job of a poet to be the seer, the sayer and the namer “Self-Reliance”, the importance of cultivating oneself “Each and All”, a poem in celebration of the who