New England Renaissance

1
New England Renaissance

• 1840 1855

2
A Cultural Rebirth

• Americans were no longer struggling for
  subsistence.
• People had time to think, to create.
• Writers gained power and a voice in the new
  culture.

3
Waning European Influence

• American writers tried new forms and new ideas
  for literature.
• They rejected the idea they had to follow
  European rules.

4
Interest in Public Affairs

• Writers continued with the belief that they
  should try to improve society.
• Growing problems in American culture
• Slavery
• Working conditions
• Political corruption
• Mexican war

5
Transcendentalism

• System of thought which developed from
  Romanticism.
• Like Romanticism, it included
• A focus on the individual
• Passionate idealism
• A love of nature

6
Transcendentalism

• Also a return to Puritan ideals because its
  adherents shared
• A utopian vision
• Great faith and moral enthusiasm
• An eagerness to reform society

7
Influences

• Transcendentalists were influenced by European
  philosophers such as Immanuel Kant.
• Transcendentalists were reacting to emphasis on
  the ideas of John Locke.

8
Transcendental Interpretation

• The mind can learn spiritual truth
• Without using the senses
• Without reasoning through past authority
• Without ratiocination (exact thinking)
• This belief in the minds capacity is the
  embodiment of democracy and the Protestant
  Reformation.

9
Main Principles

• All creation essentially united no competition
  between man and man, or man and nature
• Humanity is essentially good
• Insight (or intuition) is better than logic or
  experience for understanding spiritual truths

10
More Principles

• To transcend is to rise above or go beyond the
  limits of something.
• We can transcend to a higher spiritual plane go
  beyond the limits of ordinary life.
• We transcend through intuition, not reason.

11
More Principles

• We transcend by learning from and living in
  harmony with nature.
• We transcend as individuals.
• Everyone is capable of transcending.
• After transcending, we will want to do the right
  and moral thing.

12
Notable Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau

13
Ralph Waldo Emerson

• 1803-1882
• Educated at Harvard.
• A Unitarian minister like his father, until he
  resigned at 29.
• After that, became a writer.

14
Emersons Ideas

• Learned the principles of transcendentalism from
  Carlyle, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
• Otherwise, widely read
• Plato
• Montaigne
• Berkeley, Hume and Locke
• Swedenborg

15
Important Works

• Nature (1836) expresses basic ideas of his
  philosophy, and love of nature.
• The American Scholar (1837) applies
  Transcendentalism to American culture and
  politics.
• Essays (1841), including Self-Reliance and The
  Over-Soul

16
From Self-Reliance

• Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of
  your own mind.
• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
  minds With consistency, a great soul has simply
  nothing to do.
• What I must do is all that concerns me, not what
  the people think.

17
From Self-Reliance

• How does (and should) a person define his/her
  place in society?
• What are the two major barriers to self-reliance?
  
• What are the implications of self-reliance for
  daily life?

18
Henry David Thoreau

• 1817-1862
• Born in Concord, Mass. Educated at Harvard.
• a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural
  philosopher to boot.

19
A Different Drummer

• Lived an unconventional life according to
  unconventional principles.
• Widely read, but hardly left Concord.
• Reluctant to work for a living at a prosaic job
  instead was Emersons handyman.

20
Civil Disobedience

• Went to jail because he refused to pay a poll
  tax, as a protest against the Mexican War.
• Spent two years in a hut on Walden Pond formed
  the basis for Walden.
• Died of tuberculosis, having published very
  little.

21
An American Scholar

• Some said Thoreau was the American Scholar
  Emerson had called for in his famous lecture
• The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise,
  and to guide men by showing them facts amidst
  appearances.

22
From Walden

• Uses many aphorisms terse formulation of a
  truth or sentiment to express ideas.
• Ex If a man does not keep pace with his
  companions, perhaps it is because he hears a
  different drummer. Let him step to the music
  which he hears, however measured or far away.

23
American Style

• Aphorism makes Thoreaus ideas though they are
  revolutionary seem sensible and even folksy.
• An element of American style, to explain complex
  ideas using simple, down-to-earth language.

24
SPECIAL THANKS TOclass.maclay.org/class/rparks/
Presentations/New_England_Renaissance.ppt
25
Bibliography

• Bickman, Martin. Transcendental Ideas
  Definitions. U. of Colorado. 2003. December 1,
  2004. http//www.vcu.edu/engweb/
  transcendentalism/ideas/definitionbickman.html
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Hart and Leininger.
  197-98.
• Fuller, Margaret. Hart and Leininger. 234.
• Hart, James D. and Phillip W. Leininger, eds.
  Oxford Companion to American Literature. 6E. New
  York OUP, 1995.
• Thoreau, Henry David. Hart and Leininger.
  662-63.
• Transcendentalism. Encyclopædia Britannica.
  2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School
  Edition. 1 Dec. 2004 lthttp//school.eb.com/eb/
  article?tocId9073185gt.
• Woodlief, Ann. Points and questions to consider
  as you read Self-Reliance. Virginia
  Commonwealth U. 2003. 4 December 2004.
  http//www.vcu.edu/ engweb/eng372/selfques.htm