American Literature

030533/4/5, 8030533/4/5, 8thth Oct. 2006 Oct. 2006

The American Romanticism

(II)

Lecture Four

It is a 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought.

The overall movement shared similar philosophies. These philosophies rested on the Lockian concept of Idealism and Kant's belief in intuition.

Emerson defined it as “idealism” simply. In reality it was far more complex collection of beliefs: that the spark of divinity lies within man; that everything in the world is a microcosm of existence; that the individual soul is identical to the world soul, or Over-Soul. By meditation, by communing with nature, through work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty and goodness and truth.

Transcendentalism

In application, American transcendentalism urged a reform in society, and that such a reform may be reached if individuals resist customs and social codes, and rely rather on reason to learn what is right. Ultimately, transcendentalists believed that one should transcend society's code of ethics and rely on personal intuition in order to reach absolute goodness, or Absolute Truth.

It was indebted to the dual heritage of American Puritanism. That is to say, it was in actuality romanticism on the puritan soil.

Transcendentalism dominated the thinking of the American Renaissance, and its resonance reverberated through American life well into the 20th century. In one way or another American most creative minds were drawn into its thrall, attracted not only to its practicable messages of confident self-identity, spiritual progress and social justice, but also by its aesthetics, which celebrated, in landscape and mindscape, the immense grandeur of the American soul.

The Representativesof American Renaissance

I. The Essayists1) Ralph Waldo Emerson

2) Henry David Thoreau

Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803 - 1882)

1. His philosophy:

1) Strongly he felt the need for a new national vision.

2) He firmly believes in the transcendence of the Oversoul and thought that the universe was composed of Nature and the Soul. One could find redemption only in one’s own soul.

3) The individual, not the crowd, is the most important of all. That means to say he advocates the infinitude of private man (transcendental individualism).

4) To his eyes, the physical world was vitalistic and evolutionary. Nature is the symbol of spirit.

2. His Masterpiece: Nature

3. Evaluation to him:1) He was the first American to call for an independent

culture in both Nature and The American Scholar.(America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence).He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American.

2) Emerson’s aesthetics places emphasis on ideas, symbol, and imaginative words, which brought about a revolution in American literature in general and in American poetry in particular.

3) He embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.

4) In modern times he is sometimes dismissed as having no sense of evil, and his optimistic philosophy as so much Transcendentalist folly.

Henry David Thoreau(1817 - 1862)

1) He was one of the three great American authors of the last century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in this century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.

2) His masterpiece “Walden” holds that the most important thing for men to do with heir lives is to self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection.

3) Walden exhibits Thoreau’s calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men.

4) He has been regarded as a prophet of individualism in American literature.

5) He was very critical of modern civilization. He thought modern civilized life has dehumanized man and placed him in a spiritual quandary, by trying to amass material possessions, man is not really living; he is digging his own grave.

II. The Poets The Boston Brahmins refer to the

patrician, Harvard-educated class, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

1. He was a catalog of American and European thought and was susceptible to many influences, such as, the Enlightenment and its ideals of the rights and dignity of the individual, toleration, humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism, idealism, the Transcendentalism, German philosophy （ especially Hegel’s doctrine of a cosmic consciousness with emphasis on cohesiveness and social solidarity ） , science, pantheism, the idea of progress, and current American life with its western frontier spirit.

2. He seemed to keep his eyes on society at large comparing with Dickinson.

3. His masterpiece “Leaves of Grass” （ the collection of over 400 poems ）

About his poem:1) The fundamental ideas which were prevalent in

America at the time pervade all Whitman’s poems, such as, general mysticism and anti-rationalism, pantheism, and the theory of “the Great Chain of Being”.

2) In his poems he extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man.

3) Thematically he extolled an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness.

4) In technical terms, he added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before.

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Comparing with Whitman, Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual and pays attention to only one region “New England”. Her poetry characterizes with the concise, direct and simple diction and syntax.

She wrote altogether 1775 poems, of which only seven appeared in print in her lifetime. After her death her poems were discovered accidentally by her sister and were published intermittently （ of and on ） . In 1950 Harvard University bought all her copyright, and five years later the complete works of the poet, including three volumes of poems and three volumes of letters, was published. She was rediscovered in last century. Now she becomes as famous as Whitman

Although she had normal and vivacious girlhood, her poetry illustrates the doctrine predestination and pessimism so that her basic tone was tragic.

1) One third of her poetry concerns death and immortality.

2) Her nature poems are great in number and rich in matter and she sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.

3) On the ethical level she emphasizes free-will and human responsibility.

4) Like Emerson she holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one.