The American Renaissance: Romanticism and Transcendentalism

Transcription

1 The American Renaissance: Romanticism and Transcendentalism Thomas Cole, The Falls of the Kaaterskill, 1826

2 Characteristics Values feeling/intuition over Reason Values imagination over reality Emphasizes the individual and individual freedom Nature is unspoiled and is the pathway to spiritual and moral development Civilization is artificial and corrupts the individual Trusts the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress Focuses on the supernatural Draws from myth, legend, and folklore

3 Notable Authors Walt Whitman ( ) Emily Dickinson ( ) Frederick Douglass ( ) Ralph Waldo Emerson ( ) Henry David Thoreau ( ) Edgar Allan Poe ( ) Herman Melville ( ) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( ) James Fenimore Cooper ( ) Nathaniel Hawthorne ( ) Washington Irving ( ) Margaret Fuller ( )

4 The Transcendentalists- Who Were They? Transcendentalists held to the belief that to apprehend ultimate reality regarding God, the universe, the self, and other important metaphysical matters, one had to transcend, or go beyond, everyday human experience Preeminent among the Transcendentalists was Ralph Waldo Emerson ( ), who promulgated the belief that human beings are capable of evil because they are separated from a direct, intuitive knowledge of God Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson The abolitionist and poet Henry David Thoreau ( ) engaged in a social experiment by living for two years two months and two days in natural surroundings at a cabin he built near Walden Pond on woodland owned by friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. He compressed his experiences into one calendar year and recorded his reflections in his work Walden, part personal declaration of independence, part manual on self-reliance.

5 Transcendentalist Values The entire external world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul Physical facts of the natural world are gateways to the spiritual or ideal world Intuition is the means to behold God s spirit revealed in self or Nature Self-reliance and rugged individualism over external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition Spontaneous feeling is superior to rationality Mysticism Optimism about human nature

6 Into the Wild clip

7 Notable Works Nature (1836) By Ralph Waldo Emerson The American Scholar (1837) By Ralph Waldo Emerson The Over-Soul (1841) By Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841) By Ralph Waldo Emerson Walden (1854) By Henry David Thoreau

8 Notable Authors Ralph Waldo Emerson ( ) Henry David Thoreau ( ) Louisa May Alcott ( ) Margaret Fuller ( )

9 The Dark Romantics The Dark Romantics focused on the conflict between good and evil, the innate wickedness of human beings, madness in the human psyche, the psychological effects of sin and guilt, and the horror elements of the supernatural. Sometimes called, anti-transcendentalists, because of they rejected the optimism of the Transcendentalists, the Dark Romantics in fact shared a lot of common beliefs with their forebears. Like the Transcendentalists, the Dark Romantics maintained that there exists a kind of intuitive thinking that brings more immediate knowledge to the soul than logic and reason. The Dark Romantics also wrote on hypocrisy and saw that behind the pasteboard of social respectability lay the sheer horror of evil within the human heart.

10 Notable Authors Nathaniel Hawthorne ( ) Herman Melville ( ) Edgar Allan Poe ( )

11 Notable Works Moby Dick by Herman Melville The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe The Minister s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne Dr. Heidegger s Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne

12 Questions?