1. American Transcendentalism
“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Romanticism Transcendentalism Gothic Emotion Nature Supernatural
Atmosphere
Nature
Individual
Subjectivity
Romanticism
Transcendentalism
Gothic

3. Transcendentalism
Proposes a belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason.
Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition

4. Deism
Transcendentalism was strongly influenced by Deism, which although rationalist, was opposed to Calvinist orthodoxy.
Deists hold that a certain kind of religious knowledge is either inherent in each person or accessible though the exercise of reason.

6. Deism
Transcendentalism also involved a rejection of strict Puritan religious attitudes
Unlike the Puritans, the Transcendentalists saw humans and nature as possessing an innate goodness.

7. Born Bad or Good? Enlightenment Blank Slate Good Transcendentalists
Puritans Sinful
Enlightenment
Blank Slate
Transcendentalists
Good

8. The Influence of Romanticism
The celebration of
individualism
the beauty of nature
the virtue of humankind

9. Nature & the Oversoul
Transcendentalist writers expressed semi-religious feelings toward nature
They saw a direct connection between the universe & the individual soul
Divinity permeated all objects, animate or inanimate
The purpose of human life was union with the “Oversoul” – a sort of convergence of the individual, God & Nature

10. The Oversoul “In the faces of men and women I see God.” – Walt Whitman
Nature
Individual
God
“The groves were God’s first temples”
– Willam Cullen Bryant
“In the faces of men and women I see God.” – Walt Whitman

11. The groves were God’s first temples.
Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them—ere
he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling
wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.
- William Cullen Bryant
from “A Forest Hymn”

12. Transcendental Beliefs
Intuition, not reason, is the highest human faculty
A rejection of materialism
Simplicity is the path to spiritual greatness
Nature is a source of truth & inspiration
Non-conformity, individuality & self-reliance

13. The Transcendentalists
American Transcendentalism began with the formation in 1836 of the Transcendental Club in Boston
Magazine: The Dial
Brook Farm: communal living experiment
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Bronson Alcott

14. Transcendentalist Authors

15. Margaret Fuller ( )
American writer, journalist, and philosopher, was part of the Transcendentalist circle.
Margaret Fuller's "conversations" encouraged the women of Boston to develop their intellectual capacities.
In 1845 Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, now considered an early feminist classic.

16. Margaret Fuller
“What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely, and unimpeded to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home.”
“In order that she may be able to give her hand with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.”
“I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”

17. Major Transcendentalist Works
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Self-Reliance” 1841
Henry David Thoreau
Walden 1854
“Civil Disobedience”

18. Anti-Transcendentalists
Nathanial Hawthorne and Herman Melville
Both explore the darker side of nature and human nature
Both consider life in its tragic dimension, a combination of good and evil

19. Transcendentalism
Transcendentalists believed that humanity was Godlike and saw the world in which only good existed
They chose to focus on the positive rather than evil & darkness