Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

American between 1830 - 1850

A Relatively New Nation• A time of self-definition• Effort to distinguish itself from Europe

Economic and Social Changes • Industrialization and urbanization• Factories with poor working conditions• A new breed of materialism

Transcendentalism• An American philosophical

movement that influenced literature (Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman) and art (The Hudson River School)

• A protest against American society at that time

• An offshoot of European Romanticism (Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth)

• Man is inherently good

• Society corrupts man’s goodness

• Conformity is death

• Rely on your intuition

• The Oversoul connects God, man, and nature

• Find spiritual transcendence in nature

Tenets ofTranscendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• An essayist, poet, and speaker• Schoolmaster, ordained

minister, abolitionist • Writes “Nature” and “Self-

Reliance” • Deeply spiritual but leaves the

church• Friend of Henry David Thoreau

and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

• Emerson, the movement’s founding philosopher

• Thoreau, its most devoted practitioner

• Lives for two years in the woods on Emerson’s land

• Poet, essayist, naturalist, abolitionist

• Writes Walden and “Civil Disobedience”

Quickwrite:•Could you live here alone for two years? Why/Why not? •What would you miss? What would you enjoy?

Homework:

•Find a song with lyrics that express Transcendentalist beliefs.

•Write down the artist, title, and the lyrics that exhibit Transcendentalist thought.