美国文学简史常耀信版讲义.ppt

Section II Summit of Romanticism
American Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early eenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Keys:
---The new spirit was neither social, nor political, nor industrial, nor economic, nor literary, nor scientific, nor religious. It was all of them at once. It transcended every phase of life. It is a whole new way of thinking.
I. Background: four sources
1. Unitarianism唯一神教派
(1) Fatherhood of God
(2) Brotherhood of men
(3) Leadership of Jesus
(4) Salvation by character (perfection of one’s character)
(5) Continued progress of mankind
(6) Divinity of mankind
(7) Depravity of mankind
2. Romantic Idealism
Center of the world is spirit, absolute spirit (Kant)
3. Oriental mysticism
Center of the world is “oversoul”
4. Puritanism
Eloquent expression in transcendentalism
II. Appearance
1836, “Nature” by Emerson
III. Features
1. spirit/oversoul
2. importance of individualism
3. nature – symbol of spirit/God
garment of the oversoul
4. focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness)
IV. Influence
1. It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about the idea that human can be perfected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture.
2. It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.
3. It helped to create the first American renaissance – one of the most prolific period in American literature.
Major writers and Literary Works
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817----1862)
Louisa May Alcott (1832----1888)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882)
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Major Literary Works
Nature
The Americ