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What is Transcendentalism? Read/annotate this essay. In a small group, make a Venn Diagram showing the similarities and differences between Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Write big/clearly!

The Transcendentalists stood at the heart of the American Renaissance, the flowering of American thought in literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music in the period from about 1836 to 1880. In many regards, theirs was the first notable American intellectual movement. In an 1841 address, Emerson attempted to define the philosophy in simple terms by saying, “What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism.” In reality, it was a far more complex collection of beliefs, with idealism at its core.

To “transcend” means to go beyond a limit. The Transcendental movement was rooted in the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Basically, this philosophy deals with knowledge that goes beyond that which can be gained from the senses and our experiences. Transcendental knowledge is knowledge we can gain from our inner spirit or our mental essence, knowledge that comes from beyond the senses, beyond the physical world. Man can tap into this deeper, spiritual knowledge through his feelings and imagination; he can be inspired by the divine spark within him to see the deeper truth about God, the world, and himself.

In many ways, their philosophy was very similar to that of the Romantics. They believed the greatest truths existed beyond reason and experience and that every man was capable of discovering higher truths on his own, through his own intuition and emotions. Man and nature were inherently good, and they were extremely optimistic about man’s ability to change the world for the better. Transcendentalists had a deep reverence for nature, which they saw as a source of truth, beauty, and understanding. And they felt society and its institutions corrupted the purity of the individual, so they championed individualism.

All of these beliefs were based upon one major conviction: that the spark of divinity lay within man—that God’s essence lay within all individuals. This belief in an inner light stated that the divine spirit, or God, was present in each and every man and in all of nature. It was an all-pervading, omniscient, supreme mind. They called it the “Oversoul.”

Because each particular example of nature or humanity was a piece of the Oversoul, the divine could be understood by understanding its individual pieces. The presence of the divine spirit in both nature and the human soul made self-understanding and studying nature the two best avenues to an understanding of God and Truth. As part of the Oversoul, they felt individuals had the ability to discover higher truths intuitively or mystically, without having to use their senses or logic. Indeed, the transcendentalists suggested that reliance on sensory experience and rational thought actually impeded the acquisition of transcendent truths.

Furthermore, Transcendentalists felt that society and its institutions, particularly organized religion and political parties, ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual, who was inherently good (as was nature) because he was part of the Oversoul, or God. They had faith that man was at his best when he was truly self-reliant and independent. They argued that people should discover moral truths in nature and inside of themselves, with the guidance of their own feelings and consciences, rather than from religious doctrine or from society. This is where their strong sense of individualism comes from. Individuals, they felt, could truly make the world a better place, simply by following their own hearts. By meditation, by communing with nature, through work and art, man could go beyond his senses and attain an understanding of beauty and goodness and higher truth.

Transcendentalism dominated the thinking of the American Renaissance, and its resonances reverberated through American life well into the 20th century. In one way or another, our most creative minds were drawn into its thrall, attracted not only to its practicable messages of confident self-identity, spiritual progress, and social justice, but also by its aesthetics, which celebrated, in landscape and mindscape, the immense grandeur of the American soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Read the Ralph Waldo Emerson reading from the red textbook (p.187); with a small group, decide on five key points from the reading; write them out in the spaces below.

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Emerson

Reading from the Red Text Book (187-9)

1. How did Emerson feel man should access truth?

2. Which Romantic ideas does Emerson’s famous aphorism “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” appeal to?

3. In what way is 1800s America a fitting place for transcendental ideas to flourish?

4. How did Emerson feel about institutional religion?

Literary Term:

An aphorism is a memorable saying; it must be brief and to the point, and it expresses a truth, a principle, or an astute observation.

Read “Self-Reliance” by Emerson (Orange Textbook p. 364).

➢ Write down the main idea from each paragraph.

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“Nature” Discussion Questions (reading on next page)

1. How does Emerson’s “Nature” discuss the tension between nature and civilization?

2. Why should man gaze at the stars?

3. What transcendental ideas can you identify in this chapter?

4. How do adults and children view nature differently?

5. What does Nature offer man?

6. What is the difference between the meaning Emerson finds in nature and the meaning a scientist might find?

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and [in spite of] all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

“Each and All” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, 

Of thee from the hill-top looking down; 

The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; 

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, (5)

Deems not that great Napoleon 

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. (10)

All are needed by each one; 

Nothing is fair or good alone. 

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 

Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;  (15)

He sings the song, but it pleases not now, 

For I did not bring home the river and sky; — 

He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. 

The delicate shells lay on the shore; 

The bubbles of the latest wave  (20)

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave; 

And the bellowing of the savage sea 

Greeted their safe escape to me. 

I wiped away the weeds and foam, 

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;  (25)

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 

Had left their beauty on the shore, 

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar. 

The lover watched his graceful maid, 

As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,  (30)

Nor knew her beauty's best attire 

Was woven still by the snow-white choir. 

At last she came to his hermitage, 

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; — 

The gay enchantment was undone,  (35)

A gentle wife, but fairy none. 

Then I said, "I covet truth; 

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; 

I leave it behind with the games of youth:" — 

As I spoke, beneath my feet  (40)

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 

Running over the club-moss burrs; 

I inhaled the violet's breath; 

Around me stood the oaks and firs; 

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;  (45)

Over me soared the eternal sky, 

Full of light and of deity; 

Again I saw, again I heard, 

The rolling river, the morning bird; — 

Beauty through my senses stole;  (50)

I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 

Discussion Questions:

1. The belief that God can be found in nature is often identified with the Transcendentalist movement and their idea of the Oversoul. How might this poem reflect this perspective?

2. What is the central idea of the poem?

Henry David Thoreau

Read the Henry David Thoreau reading from the red textbook (p. 204); then, together with a small group, decide on the five important things to know from the reading; write them out in the spaces below.

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Thoreau (202-4)

Reading from the Red Text Book

1. Why did Thoreau go to live at Walden Pond?

2. What did Thoreau mean when he wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”?

3. Why does Thoreau feel nature is so important?

4. What did Thoreau’s night in jail have to do with individualism?

Read “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau (Orange Textbook p. 370).

➢ Write down the main idea from each paragraph.

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Excerpts from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived for” by Thoreau

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defense against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral [like the dawn] character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere […]

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so- called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Discussion Questions:

1. What does it mean to live deliberately?

2. What did Thoreau mean by the essential facts of life? Explain.

3. What does Thoreau mean when he says, “and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”?

4. What is resignation?

5. Figurative Language: What does Thoreau mean by the following:

a. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

b. To live sturdily and Spartan-like.

c. To cut a broad swath and shave close.

d. To drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms.

e. We live meanly like ants.

6. What is the main point of this exerpt?

Personal Essay Assignment

Write a 1-2 page essay.

Prompt: Which of Emerson and Thoreau’s ideas are most applicable to today’s world?

• Requirements:

o MLA formatting and a creative title?

o You MAY use 1st/2nd person in this essay; it is not formal.

o Intro with a broad hook and a thesis that clearly answers the prompt

o Claims should say Emerson/Thoreau’s idea(s) about “____” is/are relevant to today’s world.

o Next, you provide the evidence.

▪ For your evidence, use nice, solid quotes from three to four of the works we read.

▪ For your analysis, explain what the quote(s) mean.

▪ For your warrant, explain how the ideas are applicable to today’s world by including your own opinions and references to current news and/or history.

o Don’t forget to use transitions and edit for comma use.

o In the conclusion, re-cap the main idea of the essay and then broaden out (link back to your hook this time—that’s a nice way to do it).

• Citation Help:

o Use quotation marks when you use words/phrases directly from the text.

o When citing poetry, you use line numbers instead of page numbers in the parenthetical. Use a slash (/) to show where the poet has started a new line.

o If you are quoting more than four typed lines or more than four lines of poetry, use a block quote; to do this, hit return and tab twice. You do not use quotation marks with block quotes.

o Do not forget to include the parenthetical. For example, “blah blah” (“Self-Reliance” 365). ( Note, since we are citing multiple works by the same author, you use the title of the work, not the author’s name.

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