Leaders of Transcendentalist Movement - Paper 108

Leaders of Transcendentalist Movement

1. Major Leaders of Transcendentalist Movement Prepared by Gopi Dervaliya

2. Personal Information Name : Gopi Dervaliya Roll no. 08 Sem : 2 Paper Name : The American Literature Paper no. : 108 Paper Code : 22401 Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English- M.K.B.U Email : [email protected]

3. 03 01 02 04 05 06 Table of contents Major Leaders of Transcendentalist Movement Citation Introduction What is Transcendentalism Major Transcendentalist Values Conclusion

4. Introduction •The treatment of Transcendentalism by twentieth-century teachers of literature and American history has followed a long tradition of focusing primarily on the European and American cultural influences on its major figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller. •Their work is seen as fitting into various Western currents such as German Romanticism, Unitarian theology, neo-Platonism, and American utopian thought. •They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe”.

5. What is Transcendentalism ? Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement centered around spirituality that was popular in the mid-19th century. Key transcendentalism beliefs were that humans are inherently good but can be corrupted by society and institutions, insight and experience and more important than logic, spirituality should come from the self, not organized religion, and nature is beautiful and should be respected.

6. Major Transcendentalist Values • Individualism : They saw the individual as pure People were best when they were independent • Idealism : Comes from Romanticism Importance on imagination, intuition and creativity They wanted to bring back a more “ideal” • Divinity of Nature : Transcendentalists didn’t believe in organized religion They saw nature as sacred and divine Humans to have a close relationship with nature Humans shouldn’t try to change or improve nature

7. Major Leaders of Transcendentalist Movement •Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) •Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) •Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

8. Ralph Waldo Emerson •An American essayist, poet, and popular philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston, but achieved worldwide fame as a lecturer and the author of such essays as “Self-Reliance,” “History,” “The Over-Soul,” and “Fate”. •Drawing on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism, Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and an “existentialist” ethics of self-improvement.

9. Continue… •He brought together many of the original transcendentalists, and his writings form the foundation of many of the movement’s beliefs. •He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. •The day before he published his essay “Nature” he invited a group of his friends to join the “Transcendental Club” a meeting of like-minded individuals to discuss their beliefs. •He continued to host club meetings, write essays, and give speeches to promote transcendentalism. •Some of his most important transcendentalist essays include “The Over-Soul,” “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar” and “Divinity School Address.”

10. 'Self-Reliance' by Ralph Waldo Emerson •Throughout the essay he discusses the importance of individuality and how people must avoid the temptation to conform to society at the expense of their true selves. •It also contains the excellent line “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” •Self-reliance and an emphasis on the individual over community is a core belief of transcendentalism, and this essay was key in developing that view.

11. Henry David Thoreau •Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817-May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet. •Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts and died at the age of forty-four. •Like that of his near-contemporary Søren Kierkegaard, Thoreau’s intellectual career unfolded in a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almost his entire life. •After graduating from Harvard in 1837, he struck up a friendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay “Nature” he had first encountered earlier that year.

12. Continue… •Thoreau had intimate bonds with his family and friends, and remained unmarried although he was deeply in love at least twice. •Thoreau was a friend of Emerson’s who is best known for his book ‘Walden’. ‘Walden’ is focused on the benefits of individualism, simple living and close contact with and observation of nature. •Thoreau also frequently opposed the government and its actions, most notably in his essay “Civil Disobedience.” • Notable Quote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (From Walden)

13. "The Summer Rain" by Henry David Thoreau •The poem describes the narrator's delight at being in a meadow during a rainstorm. •The poem frequently mentions the enjoyment that observing nature can bring, and there are many descriptions of the meadow such as, “ A clover tuft is pillow for my head/And violets quite overtop my shoes” •But Thoreau also makes a point to show that he believes nature is more enjoyable and a better place to learn from than intellectual pursuits like reading and studying.

14. Sarah Margaret Fuller •Margaret Fuller was the daughter of a Massachusetts congressman who provided tutors for her in Latin, Greek, chemistry, philosophy and later, German. •Exercising what Barbara Packer calls “her peculiar powers of intrusion and caress” . •Fuller became friends with many of the transcendentalists, including Emerson. •In the winters of 1839–44, Fuller organized a series of popular and influential “conversations” for women in Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore in Boston. •She journeyed to the Midwest in the summer of 1843, and published her observations as ‘Summer on the Lakes’ the following year.

15. Continue… •’Woman in the Nineteenth Century’ (1845), a revision of her “Great Lawsuit” manifesto in ‘The Dial’, is Fuller’s major philosophical work. •A well-known journalist and ardent supporter of women’s rights, she helped cofound ‘The Dial’, the key transcendentalist journal, with Emerson, which helped cement her place in the movement and spread the ideas of transcendentalism to a wider audience. •An essay she wrote for the journal was later published as the book ‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century’, one of the earliest feminist works in the United States. •She believed in the importance of the individual, but often felt that other transcendentalists, namely Emerson, focused too much on individualism at the expense of social reform.

16. Conclusion By the end of the 1840s, many key transcendentalists had begun to move onto other pursuits, and the movement declined. This decline was further hastened by the untimely death of Margaret Fuller, one of the leading transcendentalists and cofounder of ‘The Dial’. Transcendentalism represents an important moment in a new American consolidation of global religious awareness. Seeing such strong connections that were so pervasive in one of America’s most original intellectual movements—and with ‘Walden’ long-installed as part of the Western canon.

17. Citation •Goodman, Russell. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 2 Nov. 2018, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/emerson/#Oth. •Rockefeller, Lily. "Biography of Henry David Thoreau, American Essayist." ThoughtCo, Feb. 17, 2021, thoughtco.com/biography-of-henry-david-thoreau-4776988. •Sarikas, Christine. “What Is Transcendentalism? Understanding the Movement.” What Is Transcendentalism? Understanding the Movement, 23 July 2019, https://blog.prepscholar.com/transcendentalism-definition-movement . •Todd Lewis, Kent Bicknell. “The Asian Soul of Transcendentalism.” Association for Asian Studies, 1 Oct. 2021, https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-asian-soul-of-transcendentalism/.

18. Thank you…