Lesson 4 Chapter Four-New England Transcendentalism
Emerson & Thoreau

New England Transcendentalism:
Historical Background
 In 1836 a little book (Nature 论自然by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the voice of which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism) came out which made a tremendous impact in the intellectual life of America.
 Some New Englanders, not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed themselves into the Transcendentalist Club. They expressed their views, published their journal, The Dial《日规》.
New England: it took more than a century for the British to establish the 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast. The 13 colonies were divided according to their geographical locations from South to the North, three sections: the southern colonies, the middle colonies and the northern colonies (or New England). The north colonies were basically founded by Puritans and Independents both of whom had suffered a lot of religious persecution in England. They came to the New England for the sake of free worship.
 They reacted against the faith of Boston businessmen and the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism.
 The word, “Transcendental”, was not native to America, it was a Kantian(康德的) term denoting, as Emerson puts it, “whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought.”

Transcendentalism
 Definition: it is a literary movement flourishing in New England from the 1830s to the American Civil War. It stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.
 Period: from the 1830s to the American Civil War (1861-1865)

Major Features of New England Transcendentalism:
 First, the Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit or the Oversoul (oversoul is an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which are a part. It exists in nature and man alike and constitutes the chief element of the universe. It is a key doctrine for Transcendentalists), as the most important thing in the universe. Now this, obviously, represented a new way of looking at the world (it is apparently a reaction to the C18th Newtonian concept of the universe. In the C18th it was generally held that the world was made up of matter. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to the neglect of spiritual welfare.)
 Secondly, it stressed the importance of the individual. To them the self-reliant individual was the most important element of the society. It was a new way of looking at man(it was a reaction against the Calvinist concept that man is totally depraved, he is sinful and perseveres in the sinhood, and cannot hope to be saved except through the grace of God. It was also a reaction against the process of dehumanization that came in the wake of developing capitalism. The industrialization of New England was turning men into nonhumans. People were losing their individuality and were becoming uniform. The Transcendentalists saw the process in progress and, by trying to reassert the importance of the individual, emphasized the significance of men regaining their lost personality).
 Thirdly, the Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature (Nature was, to them, not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. It was the garment of the Oversoul. Therefore, it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence in the human mind. What the Transcendentalists seemed to be saying was, “Go back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence and you’ll became spiritually whole again.” The natural implication of all this was, of course, that things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature) as symbolic of the spirit or god.

Importance of Transcendentalism:
 New England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influences (including the idealistic philosophy from Germany and France, such as the Kantian Philosophy of transcendentalism, European Romanticism, as well as Oriental mysticism, such as Hindu works as Upanishads and Nhagavad-gita and the doctrine and philosophy of the Chinese Confucius and Mencius) and native American Puritan tradition.
 New England Transcendentalism was important to American literature. It inspired a whole new generation of famous authors (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson). Without its impetus, America might have been deprived of one of its most prolific literary periods in its history.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1830-1882)
 Life: he was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. When he was still a child, the family fortunes fell. He went to Harvard, the liberal atmosphere of the college made him reject Calvinist tenets (Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, God’s irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.) and Unitarianism. He went to Europe, and back with him the influence of European Romanticism. He formed an informal Transcendentalits’ club, and the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial to explain their ideas. He became the most eloquent spokesman, the most influential of New England Transcendentalist.
 Important works:
 Nature《论自然》：the Bible of New England Transcendentalism; Emerson’s most important work that establishes the bases of his Transcendentalist idea. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
 The American Scholar《美国学者》: “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”. Emerson called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. Americans should write about here and now instead of imitation and importing from other lands.
 “Self-Reliance”《论自立》:a famous essay calling for the need of self-reliance.
 The Divinity School Address《神学院演说》: this famous speech carries some sever criticism on traditional Christianity, especially the Puritan thoughts.
 Philosophic ideas:
Emerson was the father of the American Transcendentalism, a moral philosophy that stresses intuitive understanding and from which spring many bits of thought that have influenced generations of the Americans-Oversoul, individualism, independence of mind and self-reliance. But he was more of a literary man than a philosopher. He never applied the word Transcendentalism as a moral philosophy, is quite unsystematic while the best of his prose writings rank among the best in American literature and some of his poetic diction are far ahead of his time.


Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
 Life: Thoreau’s father was an unsuccessful storekeeper, but his mother was an aspiring woman. Thoreau graduated from Harvard. In 1845 when he was 27, with the permission of Emerson, Thoreau went to build a cabin on a piece of Emerson’s property on Walden Pond, and moved in on the July 4(American Independence Day, illustrates Thoreau’s desire to be independent and find truth for himself), and lived there in a very simple manner (on the Walden Pond, Thoreau tried to be self-reliant in everything. He worked hard at what interested him-observing nature, writing, and reading the “heroic” books. During his sojourn at the Pond, this “one-man revolutionist” surmounted the obstacles of an increasing complex society by simplicity and self-reliant independence) for a little over 2 years. Thoreau moved back to Concord, and wrote about his experience in the famous book, Walden《林中生活》. Thoreau was an active Transcendentalist（Thoreau did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently out-spoken on the point; he hated the human injustices as represented by the slavery system. His firm stance on the execution of John Brown was most explicit in his “ A Plea for John Brown”）. He had no contemporary readers and yet became very great in the C20th.
 Important works:
 Analysis of Walden《林中生活》或《华尔登》
 Thoreau’s masterpiece and a great Transcendentalist work;
 It is one of the American classics that records Thoreau’s experiment in living at Walden Pond, his sympathetic understanding of nature, his meditation on the meanings of life and his social criticism.
 Compared with Emerson’s Nature, it is more radical and social-minded.
 It is a book about man (It is a book about man, what he is, and what he should be and must be. He holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection.).
 Thoreau was a prophet of individualism (as he saw it, 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. Spiritual richness is real wealth) in American literature.

 Analysis of “Civil Disobedience” 《论公民的不服从》
 During his stay in Walden, he went back occasionally to his village, and on one of these visits he was detained for a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll-tax of 2 dollars to a government he thought unjust.
 This event inspired him to write his famous essay “Civil Disobedience” which, advocating passive resistance to unjust laws of society, influenced people such as Mahatma Gandhi.