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The American Transcenden tal Movement

The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

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Page 1: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

The American Transcendental

Movement

Page 2: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era

Earliest Literature to 1800:Native AmericansPuritan and Colonial Literature

American Romanticism (1800 – 1860)

Page 3: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

History of Romanticism(1800-1830)

A number of changing attitudes related to a sense of nationalism—a devotion to one’s nation or patriotism—not a philosophy yet

Page 4: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

•The romantics’ emphasis on the individual reflects the political ideal set forth in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

•This new emphasis leads to a new focus on the dignity and worth of the common individual and to social reforms that were meant to fulfill this ideal of equality.

Page 5: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Romantic Literature and Attitudes:

Romantics were mostly interested in the expression of their own intuitive experiences.

Page 6: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:

•NATURE

•THE PAST

•THE INNER WORLD OF HUMAN NATURE

Page 7: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:

•NATURE: Romantics emphasized the beauty, strangeness, and the mystery of nature. As opposed to the rational laws of the realists/rationalists•They saw nature not as a machine, but as an organic process, constantly developing and changing.• They placed emphasis on the organic connection between the human imagination and the natural world.• The mystery and grandeur of the vast and still unknown land were part of their heritage and a powerful influence on their imaginations.

Page 8: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:

THE PAST:

The rise of nationalism brought with it a new interest in the American past.

American literature gradually developed a sense of a national past and of an emerging national character.

Page 9: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:

THE INNER WORLD OF HUMAN NATURE:

Romantics emphasized the emotions, intuition, and the individual and thus encouraged the exploration and the expression of the writer’s most private inner being.

Romantic writers becameinterested in the irrational depths of human nature.

Page 10: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

The American Romantic writers had found in Romanticism a new way of

expressing their experiences as Americans. In this process, they

expressed the nationalistic spirit of the age and

created a truly significant

national literature.

Page 11: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Significant Romantic Writers

The Transcendentalists:Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

The Brahmin Poets:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807- 1882)James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)Dark Romantics/Anti-Transcendentalists:

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)Herman Melville (1819-1891)Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849)

Page 12: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•Chiefly an attitude toward humans, nature and the world.

•The term came from the German philosopher Immannuel Kant.

•He wrote the Critique of Practical Reason (1788)—to him transcendental meant the knowledge or understanding a person gains intuitively, although it lies beyonddirect physical experience.

Page 13: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They had a sense of intense individualism and self-reliance

Page 14: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They had a sense of intense individualism and self-reliance

•They believed in the unity of God and the world

Page 15: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They had a sense of intense individualism and self-reliance

•They believed in the unity of God and the world

•They felt the real truths lay outside the experience of the senses, residing instead in the “over-soul—a universal benign ominipresnce . . . A God known to men only in moments of mystic enthusiasm, whose visitations leave them altered, self-reliant and purified of petty aims.”

Page 16: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They revered nature and its relationship to humanity.

•They had a philosophy of individualism, simplicity, and passive resistance to injustice.

•Many maintained a positive, optimistic, or rosy view of life.

•They focused their attention on the human spirit.

Page 17: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They revered nature and its relationship to humanity.

Page 18: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They revered nature and its relationship to humanity.

•They had a philosophy of individualism, simplicity, and passive resistance to injustice.

Page 19: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They revered nature and its relationship to humanity.

•They had a philosophy of individualism, simplicity, and passive resistance to injustice.

•Many maintained a positive, optimistic, or rosy view of life.

Page 20: The American Transcendental Movement. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era Earliest Literature to 1800: Native Americans Puritan and Colonial

Characteristics of Transcendentalists:

•They revered nature and its relationship to humanity.

•They had a philosophy of individualism, simplicity, and passive resistance to injustice.

•Many maintained a positive, optimistic, or rosy view of life.

•They focused their attention on the human spirit.