1. Transcendentali
smEmerson,
Ralph Waldo
Henry David Thoreau
&
An Introduction to
Transcendentalism

2. Ralph Waldo
• Emerson
Born May 25, 1803 in Boston
• Educated at Harvard
• Was a pastor until wife’s death in 1831;
resigned in 1832 with questions about the Church
• Travels to Europe, England, meets Romantic
poets including Wordsworth and Coleridge
• Publishes Nature in 1836…thought of as the beginning
of the Transcendentalist movement—the first real
American literary movement
• 1841: “Self-Reliance”
• Loses son to scarlet fever in 1842; work becomes
increasingly jaded
• Lives until 1882

3. Henry David
• July 12, 1817 Thoreau
 Born David Henry Thoreau in
Concord, Mass
• 1821
 The family (including siblings Helen,
John, Jr., and Sophia) moves to
Boston
• 1837
 Graduates from Harvard
 Accepts a job as a school teacher in
Concord (Is fired after 2 weeks for
refusing to beat a child) (Divine,
• 1838-1841 327)
 Heads a private school in Concord
with his elder brother, John

4. Henry David
Thoreau
• 1841-1843
 Lives with Ralph Waldo
Emerson and his family in
Concord
• 1842
 John dies suddenly of lockjaw
(Contracted by cutting his ring
finger with a razor)
• 1845-1847
 Lives in small house he builds
for himself on Walden Pond
• 1846
 Mexican War begins (Thoreau
spends a night in jail for
refusing to pay a poll tax)

5. Henry David
• 1848 Thoreau
 Begins career as a professional
lecturer
• 1849
 Publishes “Civil Disobedience”
• 1854
 Publishes Walden; or, Life in the
Woods
• 1862
 Dies in Concord, Mass

6. In His Own Words
• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out
of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply
good; be good for something.
• Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!
Live the life you've imagined.
• Men have become the tools of their tools.
• Under a government which imprisons any
unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
• What is the use of a house if you haven't got a
tolerable planet to put it on?

7. In His Own Words
• I say beware of all enterprises that require new
clothes.
• What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are
tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
• All good things are wild, and free.
• I have always been regretting that I was not as
wise as the day I was born.
• I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after
my own fashion.
• Most people dread finding out when they come
to die that they have never really lived.

8. Transcendentalism
• Basic Assumption:
 The intuitive faculty, instead of the rational or sense-
based, became the means for a conscious union of the
individual psyche with the world psyche also known as
the Oversoul, Life-Force, Prime Mover, or God.
 In other words: The basic truths of the universe lie
beyond what we can obtain from our senses
• Senses get us facts and laws, we can reason to book
knowledge and technology, but there is more to the
world
• Transcendentalism is not a religion, a philosophy,
or a literary theory…but it has components of each

9. Transcendentalism
• Major Tenets:
1. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe
Emerson: Intuition is “the highest power of the Soul”
1. The structure of the universe literally duplicates the
structure of the individual self, therefore all knowledge
begins with self-knowledge
3. Nature is a living mystery, full of signs; Nature is
Symbolic (God, humanity, and nature are all connected)
4. Individual Virtue & Happiness Depend Upon Self-
Realization
• Requires the reconciliation of 2 things:
 The Expansive or Self-Transcending Tendency
 The Contracting or Self-Asserting Tendency

10. Two Tendencies
• The Expansive or Self-Transcending
Tendency
The Desire to Embrace the World – To Know
and Become One with the World
• The Contracting or Self-Asserting
Tendency
The Desire to Withdraw, to remain Unique &
Separate – The Egotistical Existence

11. Transcendentalism
• Go over handout

12. Anti-
•
Transcendentalists
Connected with high class, good taste, distinguished
achievement, Boston/Harvard
• Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
 appreciated power of transcendental ideals, but argued
critically against them
 Saw much in nature that was not good and godlike…saw
gap between desire and possibility, the blending of good
and evil in even the highest human motives
 found in humanity a strange mixture of will and desire, an
“uneven balance” opposed to transcendentalist optimism
 Melville: Seeks “the intense feeling of usable truth”: “By
usable truth, we mean the absolute condition of present
things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not”

13. Civil Disobedience
“Civil Disobedience” Focuses on the
Relationship between Two Bodies:
• The Government
• The Individual

14. The Government
• “Government is best which governs least” (1)
• Men as machines (2-3)
• The Individual’s Duty (6-11)
 To Break the Law: “If a law requires you to be the
agent of injustice to another, then I say break the
law” (8)
 To Withdraw from Society (8-11)
• Majority of one (8)
• Rich Men vs. Poor Men (money v. virtue) (10)
 “Cast your whole vote” (9)