American Transcendentalism

Question 1

Transcendentalists

Answer 1

Started as religious. Highly-educated members of church who saw human nature as essentially good. World could become better. Experience comes from recollection - all knowledge is within us, we just need to recollect it.

Question 2

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Answer 2

Leader of the transcendentalist movement. Gave birth to it after giving his “Nature” lecture.

Question 3

Triangle of Ideas

Answer 3

God - Man - Nature.
Human is in between the two realities - the spiritual and the nature. Nature is a book written by God, and our goal is to study it.

Question 4

Self-Reliance

Answer 4

Ralph Waldo Emerson. People must rely on themselves rather than others and trust & discover themselves.

Question 5

The American Scholar

Answer 5

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Calls for independent from European tradition; purpose of the essay - to show the way back of american intellectuals to the state of men thinking

Question 6

Henry David Thoreau

Answer 6

One of the prophets of transcendentalism, embarked on a 2 year expedition, where he lived in a hut in the forest.

Question 7

Walden

Answer 7

Henry David Thoreau. Manifesto against consumerism, came up with a list of fundamental essentials - roof for your head, basic furnishings, fuel, food, clothes - you can live your life cheaply, you don’t have to enslave yourself.

Question 8

Civil Disobedience

Answer 8

Henry David Thoreau. He didn’t want to pay taxes to support the mexican war, so he was taken to prison. He felt free, because he didn’t feel guilty. Government is always oppressive, so you need to lsiten to your conscience, as laws are usually unjust.

Question 9

Fruitlands

Answer 9

Utopian camp, Emerson’s ideas put into action.
Fruitlands - brain child of Amos Bronson Alcott - educator, avoided traditional punishments; hoped to perfect human spirits, vegetarian and vegan. Used vegan diet, use of land without american labor, no tea, no coffee, used only vegetables that grew upward, not downward (they kill vegetables); prohibited leather, cotton, etc. Very short lived experiment ended with bankruptcy.

Question 10

Brook Farm

Answer 10

Provided education for all participants, played great role in american philosophy and religion; homed most important american writers of that period.

Question 11

Universal transcendental self

Answer 11

Walking outdoors, meditating amidst nature on the ideal world

Question 12

Walt Whitman

Answer 12

First modern American poet - established native tradition of american poetry, opposed tradition. Introduced common language - language of the roughs; he wasn’t appreciated and understood during his lifetime (except for Emmerson).
Whitman praises simplicity as the highest form of art; embraces science (romantics disgusted, but he praised it). Poet is the judgement and lover of the universe.

Question 13

Leaves of Grass

Answer 13

Walt Whitman, a collection of 12 poems, such as Song of Myself.

Question 14

Song of Myself

Answer 14

Walt Whitman. A part of Leaves of Grass.
He identifies himself as representative man, one of common people; he embraces whole America and celebrates unified country.
His poetry is processual and expansive.
An epic, lyrical, prophetic, mystical poem, drama of identity. Grass poem (symbolism of grass - death/resurrection pattern).
The poem’s speaker is the universe itself, transcendental self, who celebrates life eternal, good as well as evil (for transcendentalists - evil - incomplete good; dark romantics - act of principle).
In Song of Myself his self keeps growing, develops from Walt Whitman to the representative man of an entire cosmos, who sees the eternal.
Growth happens by confrontation with binary oppositions; expansion of youthful Adamic, ignorant self who assimilates oppositions, and finally speaks of death, which is not the end, but doorway to resurrection, beginning of transformation of something else, claims that living consists of many lives, every day our past self dies; death - a stage in our and nature’s endless cycles of transformation.

Question 15

Emily Dickinson

Answer 15

Wrote mostly for herself and her family, short poems, densely condensated, packed with meanings, private, independent, self-reliant.
She abandoned ambition to publish when she realized that publishers needed her poetry to be smoothed out, corrected, suited to the taste of modern audience.
Born in Massachusetts in the family of a politician; lived in seclusion; later on wore white and didn’t leave her room; wrote mostly for her drawer; poems discovered unpublished.
She simplified her life like Thoreau said - remained single, embarked on voyage for self-discovery; found freedom in solitude, nature.

Question 15

Dickinson’s poems

Answer 15

She relied on the use of oxymorons - through this she explored interconnections and relationships. She reverses expectations in her poetry; claims that people considered insane may be wiser than most of the society; unnames reality, revises it beyond easy recognition and gives reality new names; questions existence of God similarly to Nietsche.
IMPORTANT: NO sympathy for nature in her poetry - death of nature is the natural thing; no sympathy for victim; topics come from observations; poems like riddles - you have to experience them, not interpret; idiosyncratic and original; based on rhythmic patterns, unpredictable syntax, a lot of dashes to indicate pauses.