2. Emotion Supernatural Atmosphere Nature Individual Subjectivity Transcendentalism Gothic Romanticism

3.  American Transcendentalism began in the 1830’s and started to die down around 1860  Many of the Transcendentalists resided in Concord, Massachusetts  The Transcendental Club was formed in 1835  Members included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau  The Dial, a Transcendental magazine, flourished from 1840-1844

4.  Transcendentalists believed that through intuition the individual could go beyond everyday experiences and arrive at higher truths  Placed emphasis on self-reliance  Required deep faith in the individual

5.  Transcendentalists wanted “to go beyond” the limitations of the senses and everyday experience  “I have never seen a man who was quite awake” (Thoreau).  People do not see the roots of things or get to the heart of the matter

6.  By depending on upon our intuition rather than reason and logic

7.  People discover higher truths and insights

8.  Emerson was the leader of the Transcendentalists  He believed in intuition – the capacity to know things spontaneously and immediately rather than through our reasoning abilities

9.  God can be found in every aspect of nature  God is good and works through nature  Everyone is capable of understanding God through intuition  Nature is a reflection of the Divine Spirit

10.  Believed in an Over- Soul (Divine Soul)  A large entity that all individual humans were a part of  Everything in the physical world is a reflection of the Divine Soul

11.  His outlook was optimistic  Everyone should follow his own path  Believed that God is good

12.  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  People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls  Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition  Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality

13.  God could be experienced directly by each individual and did not need to be filtered through external authorities  Both valued self-reliance, industriousness, education, and simplicity

14.  Puritans looked to the Bible for divine revelation; Transcendentalists looked to Nature  Puritans viewed mankind in two groups, the saved and the damned; Transcendentalists believed that all people were connected to a divine force

15. Puritans Sinful TranscendentalistsGood Enlightenment Blank Slate