Hebbe Villeda Lin

Ralph Waldo Emerson Born in 1803 to a conservative Unitarian minister, from a long line of ministers, and a quietly devout mother, Waldo--who dropped the "Ralph" in college-- was a middle son of whom relatively little was expected.

Emerson His undergraduate career at Harvard was not illustrious, and his studies at the Harvard Divinity School were truncated by vision problems. He married Ellen Tucker when he was 20 and she died in tuberculosis when their oldest son at five. Lydia Jackson became his second wife after many years, named their children in the name of Ellen Tucker. After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young women[20] established in their mother's house

Emerson After his wife’s death, he began to disagree with the Church’s methods and misgiving about public prayer led to his resignation in 1832 Emerson toured Europe in 1832 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1857) Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle

Emerson Waldo Emerson is truly the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature, published in 1836, that represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism

o Idealistic philosophy, spiritual position, and literary movement that advocates reliance on romantic intuition and moral human conscience. o Belief that humans can intuitively transcend the limits of the senses and of logic to a plane of “higher truths” o Value spirituality (direct access to benevolent God, not organized religion or ritual), divinity of humanity, nature, intellectual pursuits, social justice

Transcendentalism can be read as one of many spiritual revivals American culture fostered in antebellum years

o European Romanticism o American Unitarianism

o Begins Germany, late 18 th century o England: s o Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, etc. o America: 1820s-1860s o Irving, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Whitman, etc.

o Reaction again “overly- rational” Enlightenment philosophy, art, religion, literature o Poetry/ art not a thing of logic, strict rhyming, strict meter, highest classes o Art- inspiration, spontaneity, “naturalness” o In NATURE and CHILDHOOD we see universal, spiritual truths

o Nature the key to self- awareness o Open self to nature & you may receive its gifts: a deeper, more mystical experience of life o Nature offers a kind of “grace”- “salvation” from mundane evil of everyday life

o External world of nature actually reflects invisible, spiritual reality o Self-reliance: Seek the truth in immediate perceptions of the world o Then one can reconcile body and soul (which is part of “Universal Soul” or “Over soul, source of all life

o Heightened psychological state o Overwhelming experience of awe, reverence, comprehension o Achieved when soul is immersed in grandeur of nature o Sense of transcendence from everyday world

o Arrives in America 1820 o Center around Concord, Massachusetts- kind of artists’ colony o “ Transcendentalist Club” 1836 – writing, reading, reform projects o Utopian communities – groups to escape American materialism

o Emerson a Unitarian minister o Unitarianism (Christian denomination) rises in late 1700s; formalized by William Ellery Channing, early s o Liberal church – broken from strict New England Congregationalism o Reject total depravity of humanity o Believe in perfectibility of humanity o Reject idea of “angry God” – focus on benevolent God o UNITY of God rather than TRINITY of Father, Son, Holy Spirit

o Too intellectualized, too removed from direct experience of God o Extend and radicalize Unitarian beliefs in benevolent God, closeness of God and human o Bring these spiritual ideas to life o If Unitarians believe that truth comes only through empirical study and rationality o Transcendentalists take that idea & add in romanticized mysticism – humankind capable of direct experience of the holy ( Laurence Buell)

o Ironic refiguring of Puritanism, without the theological dogma o Transcendentalists lonely explorers (pilgrims) outside society and convention o Trying to form new society based on metaphysical awareness o Trying to purify society by purifying hearts and minds o NATURE A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTO

Transcendentalism is “a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the Living God in the soul. Is putting to silence of tradition and formulas, that the Sacred Oracle might be heard through intuitions of the singled- eyed and pure – hearted.” (William Henry Channing)

“ Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed in the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing ; I see all ; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836)

o Goal: Reclaim/ redefine “culture” bring it back to life o Prose poem- read both for what it says literally and what it suggests about what cannot be said clearly o Three underlying assumptions: o Primacy of the soul o Sufficiency of nature o Immediacy of God

David Henry Thoreau born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817 graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary distinction After leaving the University, he joined his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced

Emerson & Thoreau

Emerson became acquainted with Thoreau in 1837 when he was 34 and Thoreau a 20-year old Harvard senior April 9, 1837, Mrs. Lucy Brown who was boarding at Thoreau's parents' house on Main Street in Concord, brought Thoreau to visit her brother-in-law, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson & Thoreau Emerson shared his huge library with Thoreau Thoreau lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord Thoreau first appears in Emerson's Journal on February 11, In his entry of February 17, 1838, Emerson comments on Thoreau's “simplicity & clear perception”

Conflicts Went on "Emerson, considered the most brilliant thinker of his day, overestimated Thoreau's natural abilities, greatly underestimated Thoreau's accomplishments, and failed to see Thoreau's purpose. Thoreau was not interested in 'engineering for all America' but in re- engineering America itself." Said by Ken Kifer—a Walden scholar and admirer of Henry David Thoreau.