Transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism

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Genre/Style

• Character sketch
• Slave narratives
• Political Novels
• Poetry
• Transcendentalism

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America coming of age

• Landscape and culture were developing and finding
  a place in a literature distinct from European
  models
• This literary period is often described as a
  renaissance or rebirth (in comparison to the
  European Renaissance of the 14th-16th centuries)
  because of the cultural development between
  1840-1860.

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Social improvement

• Other reformers Horace Mann (improve public
  education), Dorothea Dix (relieve horrible
  conditions in institutions for the mentally ill),
  William Lloyd Garrison (abolish slavery),
  Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller and Emma
  Willard (womens rights).
• Many utopian projects were created in an attempt
  to perfect society. Utopia ideal and perfect
  state

• New England was experiencing a period/movement of
  self-improvement and intellectual inquiry called
  Lyceum.
• Goals of this movement training teachers,
  establishing museums, and instituting social
  reforms.
• Emerson provided a series of lectures on
  self-improvement. Emersons utopian group became
  known as The Transcendental Club.

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What does Transcendentalism mean?

• Definition in determining the ultimate reality
  of God, the universe, the self and other
  important matters, one must transcend, or go
  beyond, everyday human experience in the physical
  world.

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Where does Transcendentalism come from?

• The term transcendental came from 18th century
  German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
• Transcendentalism originated from the past idea
  of Idealism (created by Greek philosopher Plato
  in 4th century BC).
• Idealismtrue reality involved ideas rather than
  the world perceived by the senses. They wanted
  to look past physical appearances to see
  permanent reality and truth.
• Transcendentalists were Idealists in a broader,
  more practical sense. They believed in human
  perfectibility as an achievable goal and worked
  to achieve it.

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Characteristics

• Everything in the world, including human beings,
  is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
• The physical facts of the natural world are a
  doorway to the spiritual or ideal world which
  hold important truths.

• People can use their intuition to behold Gods
  spirit revealed in nature or their own souls.
• Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior
  to deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

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Most well-known Transcendentalist authors

• Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

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The most famous TranscendentalistRalph Waldo
Emerson

• Emerson was the best-known and most influential
  transcendentalist.
• What he combined into transcendentalism
• Puritan thought (God revealed himself through the
  Bible and the physical world)
• The beliefs of Jonathan Edwards (who found Gods
  wisdom, purity and love in the sun, moon and
  stars and in all of nature)
• And the Romantic tradition (nature)

• He viewed the world based on intuition - the
  capacity to know things spontaneously and
  immediately through our emotions rather than
  through reason and logic.
• He possessed an intense feeling of optimism that
  stemmed from the belief that God could be found
  directly through nature (even tragic natural
  events such as death, disaster and disease).

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Emersons beliefs continued

• God is good and works through nature.
• Death, disease and disasters have a spiritual
  explanation.
• Evil stems from a separation from a direct,
  intuitive knowledge of God.
• One must know God directly to realize that they
  are a part of the Divine Soul (universe), which
  is the source of all good.

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• The appeal of Emersons optimism and
  transcendentalism was a result of what was
  happening in society at the time economic
  downturns, regional strife, conflict over
  slavery.

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Anti-Transcendentalists aka Dark Romantics

• Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
• Unlike Emerson and transcendentalism, their view
  of the world lacked optimism. They saw a dark
  side to human existence and recorded this aspect
  of human nature in their works.
• Similarities to transcendentalism valued
  intuition over reason, saw signs and symbols in
  events, spiritual facts lie behind physical
  appearances.
• Differences spiritual forces are not necessarily
  good or harmless.
• Their view developed from the mystical and
  melancholy aspects of Puritan thought.
• Their works explored the conflict between good
  and evil, psychological effects of guilt and sin,
  and madness and derangement in human psyche.
• They saw the blankness and the horror of evil
  within humanity.

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Where does Edgar Allen Poe fit in?

• Although often considered a Dark Romantic, Poe
  can be viewed more as a Gothic writer.
• Poes works strongly represent Gothic elements
  more so than valuing intuition over reason or
  examining the natural world for God and spiritual
  truths.

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Gothic literature

• Settings- include large, drafty old houses that
  have "been in the family for years." 
• Atmosphere of mystery and suspense
• A ghostly legend, an unexplainable occurrence, or
  a story about a horrible death or murder .
• Omens, foreshadowing, and dreams usually play a
  large role in the mysterious air that is created
  within the story.
• Include highly charged emotional states like 
  terror, a feeling that one is on the brink of
  insanity, anger, agitation, an exaggerated
  feeling of some impending doom, and obsessive
  love.

• Supernatural events  ghosts, doors that open
  themselves, unexplained sounds, etc.
• Damsels in distress are frequent.  Women who are
  frightened and confused, wandering around lost,
  or dying due to a slow and unexplainable ailment.
• Words designed to evoke images of gloom and doom
  dark, foreboding, forbidding, ghostly, etc.
• Romantic themes often involve the death of a man
  or woman in the throes of some great passion, the
  obsessive nature of a man or woman in love, or
  excessive grief one feels upon the loss of a
  loved one.