American Transcendentalism
| Site: | Plateforme pédagogique de l'Université Sétif2 |
| Cours: | History of American Literature |
| Livre: | American Transcendentalism |
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| Date: | samedi 7 juin 2025, 20:01 |
1. 1. Features of Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. 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”. Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s, they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850s in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery.
(Transcendentalism)
The Transcendentalist movement was a
reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a manifestation of the general
humanitarian trend of 19th-century thought. The movement was based on a
fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The Transcendentalists
tried to find the truth through feeling and intuition rather than through logic.
For Orestes Brownson, “Transcendentalism is “the recognition in man of the
capacity of knowing truth intuitively…an order of knowledge transcending the
senses”. In this regard, nature was their bible. In addition, Chritopher Cranch
states:
All things in Nature are beautiful types to the soul
that will read them
…
Every object that speaks to the senses was meant for
the soul
The transcendentalists operated from the start with
the sense that the society around them was seriously deficient: a “mass” of
“bugs or spawn” as Emerson put it in “The American Scholar”; slavedrivers of
themselves, as Thoreau says in Walden. As
the nineteenth century came to its mid-point, the transcendentalists’
dissatisfaction with their society became focused on policies and actions of
the United States government: the treatment of the Native Americans, the war
with Mexico, and, above all, the continuing and expanding practice of slavery.
As a group, the transcendentalists led
the celebration of the American experiment as one of individualism and
self-reliance. They took progressive stands on women's rights, abolition,
reform, and education. They criticized government, organized religion, laws,
social institutions, and creeping industrialization. They created an American
"state of mind" in which imagination was better than reason,
creativity was better than theory, and action was better than contemplation.
And they had faith that all would be well because humans could transcend limits
and reach astonishing heights. Transcendentalists
advocated the idea of a personal knowledge of God, believing that no
intermediary was needed for spiritual insight. They embraced idealism, focusing
on nature and opposing materialism. They emphasized the unity rather than the
“Trinity” of God. (Transcendentalism)
2. 2. Prominent Authors and Works
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was a Harvard-educated essayist
and lecturer and is recognized as our first truly "American" thinker.
In his most famous essay, "THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR," he urged Americans
to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and imitation and be themselves. He
believed that people were naturally good and that everyone's potential was
limitless. He inspired his colleagues to look into themselves, into nature,
into art, and through work for answers to life's most perplexing questions. His
intellectual contributions to the philosophy of transcendentalism inspired a uniquely
American idealism and spirit of reform.
Emerson’s sense that men and
women are, as he put it in Nature, gods “in ruins,” led to one of
transcendentalism’s defining events, his delivery of an address at the Harvard
Divinity School graduation in 1838. In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson founded the
Transcendental club and published The Dial magazine. In 1836, Emerson published Nature.
(Transcendentalism)
Emerson stated that man should not see nature as
something to be used.
Excerpts from “Nature” by Emerson:
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the
fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing
generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why
should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not
we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion
by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in
nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the
powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among
the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of
its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in
the fields. There are new lands, new
men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. (Naure)
“I am the lover of
uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear
and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and
especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as
beautiful as his own nature.”
In 1837, Emerson gave a famous speech at
Harvard University: The American Scholar. He attacked the influence of tradition
and the past and called for American creativity. One famous essay is
“Self-Reliance” where he states the following ideas: “To believe in your own
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for
all men-that is genius”. Then he says
There is a time in every
man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that
imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his
portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, 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. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has
tried. (Emerson Self-reliance 7)
Emerson also states: “Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph
of principles.” (12)
In his essay The Poet, Emerson describes
the poet as a complete man. For him, “a good poem helps us to mount to
paradise”. According to Emerson, poetry did not always have to produce pleasant
sounds. Harsh sounds could be used to surprise the ear.
- Henry David Thoreau
From French and Scottish descent, Thoreau
was born in Concord and made it his permanent home. From a poor family, like
Emerson, he worked his way through Harvard. Throughout his life, he reduced his
needs to the simplest level and managed to live on very little money, thus
maintaining his independence.
Henry
David Thoreau studied Latin, Greek, Italian, French, German, and Spanish at
Harvard, where he heard Emerson’s “The American Scholar” as the commencement
address in 1837. For two years Thoreau carried out the most famous experiment
in self-reliance when he went to WALDEN POND, built a hut, and tried to live
self-sufficiently without the trappings or interference of society. Later, when
he wrote about the simplicity and unity of all things in nature, his faith in
humanity, and his sturdy individualism, Thoreau reminded everyone that life is
wasted pursuing wealth and following social customs. (Transcendentalism)
In Walden’s opening chapter, “Economy,”
Thoreau considers the trade-offs we make in life, and he asks, as Plato did in
The Republic, what are life’s real necessities. Like the Roman philosophers
Marcus Porcius Cato and Marcus Varro he seeks a “life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity, and trust” (15).
Thoreau’s
masterpiece, Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854), is the result of two years,
two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he
built at Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson. In Walden, Thoreau
consciously shapes this time into one year, and the book is carefully
constructed so the seasons are subtly evoked in order. The book also is
organized so that the simplest earthly concerns come first (in the section called
“Economy,” he describes the expenses of building a cabin); by the ending, the
book has progressed to meditations on the stars.
In Walden, Thoreau not only tests the
theories of Transcendentalism, he re-enacts the collective American experience
of the 19th century: living on the frontier.
Thoreau felt that his contribution would be
to renew a sense of the wilderness in language. He rejects the things ordinary
people desire in life, such as money and possessions. He emphasizes the search
for true wisdom.
(Transcendentalism)
Excerpts from Walden:
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. (15)He was deeply interested in the Abolitionist movement.
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” (35)
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” (40)
One of the central themes in Walden is the value of simplicity, both in lifestyle and in thought. Thoreau’s purpose in retreating to Walden Pond was not to demonstrate the economic advantages of living simply, but to explore a deeper truth.This leads to the broader theme of the spiritual journey. Thoreau views his time in nature as a process of self-discovery and self-cultivationan. In this context, solitude and reflection become tools for inner development. Alongside these personal themes is the recurring idea of growth, change, and renewal, which is mirrored in the changing seasons at Walden. Nature becomes a symbol of continual transformation, encouraging the individual to evolve and renew themselves just as the world around them does. At the heart of all these themes is the individual. Thoreau emphasizes the importance of personal independence, self-reliance, and the courage to live according to one's own values.
Walden can be read on two levels. The first level has a surface meaning. It is an account of Thoreau's simple life alone in a small hut in the woods. On the second level, Walden has very deep meanings because it is a transcendental work. For Thoreau as well as the other transcendental writers, poverty is not an obstacle to spoil people's life. Nevertheless, the main reason behind people's misery is their continuous chase to achieve money and be wealthy. These non-stop pursuits corrupt their lives leading them to be meaningless and fruitless.
He considers money and wealth are nothing but obstacles to prevent people from having a peaceful life. Hence, one should be satisfied so that he can resist the temptation of the indulgence in the luxurious life. Sometimes, one should appreciate the real value of the things he/she has regardless of their materialistic value. In this regard, one can notice how “Transcendentalism clashed with economic principles of the day. For the Transcendentalists, capitalism was inherently materialistic, and materialism was inherently wrong. Mankind must see the higher reality behind things, not worship the things themselves” (Transcendentalism)
- Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller played a large part in both the women's and Transcendentalist movements. She helped plan the community at Brook Farm, as well as editing The Dial, and writing the feminist treatise, Woman in the Nineteenth Century.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), a revision of her “Great Lawsuit” manifesto in The Dial, is Fuller’s major philosophical work. She holds that masculinity and femininity pass into one another, that there is “no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman”. In classical mythology, for example, “Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo; woman of the Masculine as Minerva.” But there are differences. The feminine genius is “electrical” and “intuitive,” the male more inclined to classification. Women are treated as dependents, however, and their self-reliant impulses are often held against them. What they most want, Fuller maintains, is the freedom to unfold their powers, a freedom necessary not only for their self-development, but for the renovation of society. She stresses the importance of “self-dependence,” which women lack because “they are taught to learn their rule from without, not to unfold it from within.” (Transcendentalism)