Transcendentalism Review Sheet

Study the following for your Transcendental Final.

  • “Nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson
  1. What is Emerson’s view of nature—its connection with men etc.?
  2. Who can best appreciate nature and why?
  3. How can a man be truly alone with his thoughts?
  4. What is man most connected with while in nature?
  • “Self-Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson
  1. What does Emerson mean by non-conformity and self-reliance?
  2. Why does Emerson say people resist change?
  3. How does society treat non-conformists and why?
  4. How do individuals determine good or bad?
  5. How does someone achieve greatness?
  • “Civil Disobedience” Henry David Thoreau
  1. What are some Thoreau’s views of government?
  2. What kind of government would Thoreau approve of?
  3. What should individuals do about unjust laws?
  4. What does Thoreau think of majority rule?
  5. What does Thoreau think about individuals and the law?
  • “Walden” Henry David Thoreau
  1. Why does Thoreau go to the woods?
  2. How does Thoreau think most people live their lives?
  3. What does Thoreau think of individualism and non-conformity?
  4. What does Thoreau think of poverty and being materialistic?
  5. Why does Thoreau leave the woods?
  6. the path
  7. the bug
  8. poverty
  9. morning star
  • Know and be able to explain key transcendental beliefs (from handout at the beginning of the unit). Also be able to apply Transcendentalism to what we read in class. This will be short answer.
  • Review the following quotes from “Self-Reliance”:

“...no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till….”

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms

must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but mist explore if it be goodness. Nothing is a last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

  • Review the following quotes from Walden:

“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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life...”

“Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the on the rails.”

“Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled.”

"I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside..."

‘Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet.’

“There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

“I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”

Test Format:

Part 1 – 51 Multiple Choice questions based on Transcendental readings

Part 2 – Short Answer – Transcendental beliefs and passage analysis. Be able to address relation of passage to Transcendentalism and identify and comment on use of rhetorical devices including: metaphors, similes, personification, antithesis, parallel structure, repetition, imagery, and tone.