Littell 1
Name______
Littell
English____ Block______
Date______
The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism
Directions: Read and highlight the following information about the American Renaissance and Transcendentalism.
For the Transcendentalists, the loose-knit group of writers, artists, and reformers who flourished in the 1830s and 1840s, the individual was at the center of the universe. For them, no institution, whether political or religious, was as powerful as the individual. It is fitting that that the most influential literary and philosophical movement in American history began with the struggles of one man.
Read in the author information on Ralph Waldo Emerson on page 368 of your text. Take notes below.
According to Emerson, the human mind is so powerful it can unlock any mystery, from the intricacies of nature to the wonder of God. To Emerson, “the individual is the world.” This was a radical thought in an age that gave all authority to the organized institutions of government, religion, and education. Emerson first proposed his ideas in 1833 in a speech at Harvard University, which the audience received with enthusiasm.
Many found Emerson’s ideas blasphemous and denounced him as a heretic. Emerson’s supporters, however, flocked to Concord Massachusetts, to visit him. During the height of Transcendentalist activities, Emerson’s Concord house attracted so many great minds that it was dubbed the “Athens of America.”
The writers and artists of the American Renaissance, wishing to find coherent unity in the universe, considered this the ideal. They used the term, not in today’s sense of a variety of things, but as a single concept. To them, it meant the concrete semblance of an abstract force that ordered both the spirit and matter of this world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Nathaniel Hawthorne stand out as early practitioners in attempting to embody the national idea. Other members include Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May), Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.
We will talk more about Thoreau and nonviolent civil disobedience later. For now, let us focus on Emerson.
Emerson demanded originality in thinking and writing. An examination of Emerson today should ask the questions:
- What does he mean to us?
- What can we make of him now?
- How does he help us to understand our own time?
Now read the excerpt from Nature. Remember, this “became the Transcendental Club’s unofficial statement of belief.”
Answer the Literary Analysis and reading check questions below.
- According to this passage, what is the relationship between Emerson and nature?
- Which emotions does Emerson experience when in the woods?
- Do you agree or disagree with this statement about a harmony between human beings and nature?
- Emerson uses many different visual images to state the Transcendentalist concept that nature and the human spirit are linked. Select one of these images and explain what he means.