爱默生 Ralph Waldo Emerson【创意版】.ppt

* * * Transcendentalism(1) In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts, and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, like romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th-century rationalism and established religion, 优选文档 * Transcendentalists celebrated the power of human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. The transcendentalists found their chief source of inspiration in nature. 优选文档 * Major features of New England Transcendentalism Emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part. It existed in nature and man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. 优选文档 * Emphasis on the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. As the regeneration of society could only come about through the regeneration of the individual, his perfection, his self-culture and self-improvement, and not the frenzied effort to get rich, should become the first concern of his life. The ideal type man was the self-reliant individual. 优选文档 * Offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. It was the garment of the oversoul. Therefore it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind. What the transcendentalists seemed to be saying was, “Go back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence, and you’ll become spiritually whole again.” The natural tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. 优选文档 * Emerson’s essay Nature(1836) was the first major document of the transc