1. THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
A Literary Coming of Age

2. English Critic – Sydney Smith
Literature…the Americans have none…in the four corners of the globe, who reads an American book?!

3. True American Literary Giants Emerge
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Edgar Allan Poe

4. The Rise of Periodicals
The Dial
Harper’s Magazine
The New York Times
The Atlantic Monthly

5. The American Renaissance
American culture came into its own
American literature distanced itself from the conventional forms of European literature
The period produced more literary masterpieces than any other time in American literature

6. The American Renaissance
New England became known for intellectual inquiry
Lyceums provided knowledge, teaching, discourse, and debate
New England was the center of reform movements in education, abolition, and women’s rights

7. The American Renaissance
Utopian projects grew in popularity
New Englanders sought to create a more perfect society
Ralph Waldo Emerson, through his writing and lectures, helped inspire new ways of thinking

9. American Transcendentalism
Transcendental philosophy has its roots in the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant
Transcendentalism believes that ultimate true is found by transcending, or going beyond/above, normal human experience through use of intuitive thought

10. American Transcendentalism
Emerson introduced the philosophy of transcendentalism to Americans
Emerson saw Plato’s idealism in modern transcendentalism
American transcendentalists believed in human perfectibility

11. American Transcendentalism
Everything, including humans, are part of the Divine Soul
Oneness with the natural world leads one to the spiritual or ideal world
Intuition can lead one to an understanding of self and God
Self-reliance and individualism overrule authority, custom, and tradition
Spontaneous feelings and intuition, not the intellectual or rational mind should be followed

12. American Transcendentalism
Emerson was the Father of American Transcendentalism
He felt the key to transcendentalist thought was the intuition
Intuition is our ability to know things spontaneously through emotions, rather than through an intellectual process

13. American Transcendentalism
Optimism is at the heart of Emerson’s transcendentalism
Emerson felt humans could find God directly in nature
Since God is in all nature, God is within us, too
Emerson called this concept the Divine Soul, or the oversoul

14. The Anti-Transcendentalists
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe

15. The Anti-Transcendentalists
These three men were also known as the Dark Romantics
Despite their critical approach to transcendentalism, they had much in common with this philosophy
The believed in the symbolism in nature, but did not see nature as necessarily good

16. The Anti-Transcendentalists
They explored the guilt associated with our Puritan ancestry
They explored the conflicts between good and evil in humans
They explored the psychological effects of sin, guilt, madness, derangement