AmericanLiterature超验主义.ppt

American Literature: Transcendentalism Lecture Three A special kind of philosophy appeared in the 1830s in US ----Transcendentalism There was no one precise “cause” for the beginning of Transcendentalism. Chance, coincidence and several independent events, thoughts and tendencies seemed to have converged in the 1830s in New England. 1. The erosion of Calvinism. 2. The progressive secularization of modern thought under the impact of science and technology. 3. The emergence of a Unitarian一神论intelligentsia 知识界with the means, leisure, and training to pursue literature and scholarship 学问. 4. The increasing insipidity 单调 and irrelevance of liberal religion to questing young minds -- lack of involvement in women’s rights and abolitionism. 5.The intrusion of the machine into the New England garden and the disruption of the old order by the burgeoning萌芽industrialism. 6.The impact of European ideas on Americans traveling abroad. 7.The appearance of talented and energetic young people like Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau on the scene. 8.The imperatives 需要 of logic itself for those who take ideas seriously -- the impossibility, for instance, of accepting modern science without revising traditional religious views. ResourcesA. Puritan heritage-----the end of the 18th century, people felt boring about the strict Calvinism. with the development of science and technology, Americans suspected the old religion----- Unitarianism（一神论） appeared----- a developed school from the Transcendentalism----- stressed continual progress of mankind rather than old religions mans total depravity”. Emerson---- once a preacher of Unitarianism, too many rituals in this religious school， resigned from the position and sought a way for people to worship more freely， also believed in individuality and the dream of making a Garden of Eden on earth held by old generation Puritans.From Jonathan Edwards Emerson inherited the ideas of inward communication with God and the divine symbolism of n