Historical features of transcendentalism as a literary movement in american literature.

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ta’lim yo’nalishi bitiruvchisiIkramova Nozimaxon Kotibxon qizining

“HISTORICAL FEATURES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

AS A LITERARY MOVEMENT IN AMERICAN

LITERATURE”

mavzuidagi

BITIRUV MALAKAVIY ISHI

Namanagan-2017

HISTORICAL FEATURES OF TRANSCENDENTALISM AS A LITERARY

MOVEMENT IN AMERICAN LITERATURE INTRODUCTION………2

Actuality of theme Our president proposed declaring the new year 2017

“the Year of Dialogue with the People and Human Interests”

The tradition to announce the name of the next year and identify priorityareas for further development during the celebration of the Constitution Day datesback to 19971

President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev by his decree has approved theaction strategy on priority areas of the country’s development for 2017-2021 Theaction strategy will be implemented in five stages, and each stage provides forapproval of a separate annual state program on the strategy’s implementation inUzbekistan, according to the decree2

The strategy includes five priority areas, and the first one envisagesimprovement of state and social construction, strengthening the role of the Uzbekparliament in modernization of the country, development of the institutionalframework of the state administration, reduction of state regulation of theeconomy, strengthening the role of civil society institutions and the media

The strategy also envisages reformation of the Uzbek judicial system, it isproposed to strengthen the genuine independence of the judicial power and theguarantee of protection of the rights and freedoms of the country’s citizens,development and liberalization of the Uzbek economy, development of the socialsphere

Ensuring security, inter-ethnic harmony and religious tolerance,implementation of balanced, mutually beneficial and constructive foreign policyaimed at strengthening the independence and sovereignty of the state, creation of asecurity belt around Uzbekistan, stability and good neighborly relations, promotion

of a positive image of the country abroad is also the most important direction of thestrategy

The Strategy includes five priority areas:

1 Improving of state and social construction

1 https://www.uzbekistan.org/named-year/archive/8071/

2 Ensuring the rule of law and reforming the judicial system

3 Development and liberalization of the economy

4 Development of the social sphere

5 Ensuring security, inter-ethnic harmony and religious tolerance,implementation of balanced, mutually beneficial and constructive foreign policy

The project has proposed to form a National Commission for theimplementation of the Uzbekistan’s Strategy on five priority areas for 2017-2021,and a Commission on the implementation of the selected priority areas

The strategy will be implemented in five phases, each of which provides forapproval of an annual National program for its implementation

Transcendentalism is a very formal word that describes a very simple idea.People, men and women equally, have knowledge about themselves and the worldaround them that "transcends" or goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch

or feel

This knowledge comes through intuition and imagination not through logic

or the senses People can trust themselves to be their own authority on what isright A transcendentalist is a person who accepts these ideas not as religiousbeliefs but as a way of understanding life relationships

The individuals most closely associated with this new way of thinking wereconnected loosely through a group known as the transcendental club, which met inthe Boston home of George Ripley Their chief publication was a periodical called

"The Dial," edited by Margaret Fuller, a political radical and feminist whose book

"Women of the Nineteenth Century" was among the most famous of its time Theclub had many extraordinary thinkers, but accorded the leadership position

to Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson was a Harvard-educated essayist and lecturer and is recognized asour first truly "American" thinker In his most famous essay, "The AmericanScholar," he urged Americans to stop looking to Europe for inspiration andimitation and be themselves He believed that people were naturally good and thateveryone's potential was limitless He inspired his colleagues to look into

themselves, into nature, into art, and through work for answers to life's mostperplexing questions His intellectual contributions to the philosophy oftranscendentalism inspired a uniquely American idealism and spirit of reform.

he Transcendental Club was associated with colorful members between 1836and 1860 Among these were literary figures Nathaniel Hawthorne, HenryWadsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman but the most interesting character byfar was Henry David Thoreau, who tried to put transcendentalism into practice Agreat admirer of Emerson, Thoreau nevertheless was his own man — describedvariously as strange, gentle, fanatic, selfish, a dreamer, a stubborn individualist.For two years Thoreau carried out the most famous experiment in self-reliancewhen he went to Walden Pond, built a hut, and tried to live self-sufficiently withoutthe trappings or interference of society Later, when he wrote about the simplicityand unity of all things in nature, his faith in humanity, and his sturdy individualism,Thoreau reminded everyone that life is wasted pursuing wealth and followingsocial customs Nature can show that "all good things are wild and free."

As a group, the transcendentalists led the celebration of the Americanexperiment 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 Theycreated an American "state of mind" in which imagination was better than reason,creativity was better than theory, and action was better than contemplation Andthey had faith that all would be well because humans could transcend limits andreach astonishing heights.3

The basic purpose of qualification paper is to investigate the development

American transcendentalism as a literary and philosophical movement

Main tasks of the work are considered as following:

1 To learn historical development of Transcendentalism as a movement

2 To overview the characteristic features of American Transcendentalism

3 To expose literary characteristics of Transcendentalism

4 To do analyses of literary carrier of Transcendentalist writers

5 To learn the main features of literary activity of Emerson

6 To investigate the importance of literary activity of Henry David Thoreau inAmerican Transcendentalism

7 To learn the place of Thoreau’s works in American transcendentalism

The practical value of the work is the fact that the results of the research

can be used in the courses of lectures and seminars of English literature andanalysis can be useful for practical courses of English language

American transcendentalism and works of representatives were object for

our research.

Methods of the work: In this work there were used overview and

comparative analyzing methods

The work consists of introduction, three chapters, conclusion and

bibliography

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSCENDENTALISM AS A MOVEMENT

1.1 Characteristic features of American Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States It arose as a reaction to or protestagainst the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time4 The doctrine

of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was of particularinterest

Transcendentalism emerged from English and German Romanticism, theBiblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, the skepticism of Hume, and thetranscendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism Miller andVersluis regard Emanuel Swedenborg as a pervasive influence ontranscendentalism It was also influenced by Hindu texts on philosophy of themind and spirituality, especially the Upanishads

A core belief of transcendentalism is in the inherent goodness of people andnature Adherents believe that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity

of the individual, and they have faith that people are at their best when truly reliant" and independent

"self-Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objectiveempiricism Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generatingcompletely original insights with as little attention and deference to past masters aspossible

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religiousmovement in Boston in the early nineteenth century It started to develop in theaftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University, following theelections of Henry Ware Sr as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805, and ofJohn Thorton Kirkland as President in 1810 Rather than as a rejection ofUnitarianism, Transcendentalism evolved as an organic consequence of theUnitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason They

were not, however, content with the sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism ofUnitarianism Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience Stated

in alternate terms, Transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement toUnitarianism, but, as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by theUnitarians

Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organizationwith the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, on September 8,

1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam (1807–78; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic HenryHedge From 1840, the group frequently published in their journal The Dial, alongwith other venues

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, and evenmore so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850 "All that can be said," Emersonwrote, "is that she represents an interesting hour and group in Americancultivation." There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists,including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham,SamuelLongfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn Notably, the transgression of thespirit, most often evoked by the poet's prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader

a sense of purposefulness This is the underlying theme in the majority oftranscendentalist essays and papers—all of which are centered on subjects whichassert a love for individual expression Though the group was mostly made up ofstruggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after

a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career

Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual Theirbeliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt toembrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science

Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy inprinciples not based on, or falsifiable by, physical experience, but deriving fromthe inner spiritual or mental essence of the human.] Transcendentalism mergedEnglish and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism

of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, and the transcendentalphilosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealism more generally),interpreting Kant's a priori categories as a priori knowledge Earlytranscendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in theoriginal and relied primarily on the writings ofThomas Carlyle, Samuel TaylorColeridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Stặl, and other English and Frenchcommentators for their knowledge of it The transcendental movement can bedescribed as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.

Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularlyorganized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual Theyhave faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent It

is only from such real individuals that true community can form Even with thisnecessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people possess apiece of the "Over-soul" (God) Because the Over-soul is one, this unites all people

as one being5

Transcendentalism has been influenced by Indian religions Thoreau

in Walden spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Indian religions directly:

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonalphilosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods haveelapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seempuny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previousstate of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions I lay down thebook and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin,priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Gangesreading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug Imeet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it weregrate together in the same well The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacredwater of the Ganges

Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will.Some adherents link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example,connected it with early socialism, but others consider it an exclusively individualistand idealist project Emerson believed the latter; in his 1842 lecture "TheTranscendentalist", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook

on life was impossible to attain in practice:

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as atranscendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of noone but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias ofnature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal

We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, historyhas afforded no example I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely onhis character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found lifemade of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knewnot how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done

by his own hands .Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia orexcess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessiveonly when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish

Transcendentalism is, in many aspects, the first notable Americanintellectual movement It has inspired succeeding generations of Americanintellectuals, as well as some literary movements

Transcendentalism influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences"

of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the NewThought movement New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father EmmaCurtis Hopkins "the teacher of teachers", Ernest Holmes, founder of ReligiousScience, the Fillmores, founders of Unity, andMalinda Cramer and Nona L.Brooks, the founders of Divine Science, were all greatly influenced byTranscendentalism6

6 INTA New Thought History Chart , Websyte.

In the 19th century, under the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson (who hadbeen a Unitarian minister) and other transcendentalists, Unitarianism began its longjourney from liberal Protestantism to its present more pluralist form

Transcendentalism also influenced Hinduism Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, rejected Hindu mythology, but also theChristian trinity He found that Unitarianism came closest to true Christianity, andhad a strong sympathy for the Unitarians, who were closely connected to theTranscendentalists Ram Mohan Roy founded a missionary committee in Calcutta,and in 1828 asked for support for missionary activities from the AmericanUnitarians By 1829, Roy had abandoned the Unitarian Committee, but after Roy'sdeath, the Brahmo Samaj kept close ties to the Unitarian Church, who strivedtowards a rational faith, social reform, and the joining of these two in a renewedreligion Its theology was called "neo-Vedanta" by Christian commentators, andhas been highly influential in the modern popular understanding of Hinduism, butalso of modern western spirituality, which re-imported the Unitarian influences inthe disguise of the seemingly age-old Neo-Vedanta

Major figures in the transcendentalist movement were Ralph WaldoEmerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott Otherprominent transcendentalists included Louisa May Alcott, Charles TimothyBrooks, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, William HenryChanning, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, John SullivanDwight, Convers Francis, William Henry Furness, Frederic HenryHedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, GeorgeRipley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Jones Very, and Walt Whitman.7

Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as

a pejorative term by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond sanityand reason

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852),satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principles

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841), inwhich he embedded elements of deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling itsfollowers "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common The narratorridiculed their writings by calling them "metaphor-run" lapsing into "mysticism formysticism's sake"8, and called it a "disease." The story specifically mentions themovement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had anyspecific targets In Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), he offerscriticism denouncing "the excess of the suggested meaning which turns intoprose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-calledtranscendentalists."

Transcendentalism flourished at the height of literary and aestheticRomanticism in Europe and America Romanticism was marked by a reactionagainst classical formalism and convention and by an emphasis on emotion,spirituality, subjectivity, and inspiration Transcendentalism, inspired by Englishand European Romantic authors, was a form of American Romanticism.Transcendentalism arose when it did for several reasons

First, it was a humanistic philosophy — it put the individual right at thecenter of the universe and promoted respect for human capabilities The movementwas in part a reaction against increasing industrialization in the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries, and against the dehumanization and materialism thatfrequently accompanied it In 1814, progressive mill owner Francis Cabot Lowellintroduced the power loom into the American textile industry at his BostonManufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts The New EnglandTranscendentalists consequently grew to maturity at a time when the nature ofwork and the role of labor were undergoing tremendous change before their eyes,and very close to home

8 Ljunquist, Kent (2002), "The poet as critic", in Hayes, Kevin J, The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe,

Secondly, in the early nineteenth century, in the period preceding the rise ofTranscendentalism, dissatisfaction with the spiritual inadequacy of establishedreligion was on the rise Some early Unitarian ministers — especially WilliamEllery Channing (who was the uncle of the Concord poet of the same name) — hadturned away from harsh, unforgiving Congregational Calvinism and preached amore humanistic, emotionally expressive, and socially conscious form of religion.Channing and a few others among the early Unitarians had a formative influence

on the Transcendentalists

However, even the liberal Unitarians remained under the sway of theseventeenth century English philosopher John Locke, who had explainedknowledge as perceivable only by direct observation through the physical senses.Kant's later presentation of knowledge as intuitive was, of course, in directopposition to Locke In this sense, Transcendentalism was a reaction against theextreme rationalism of the Enlightenment

The dissatisfaction with established religion that affected theTranscendentalists is strongly and clearly expressed in Emerson's 1838 "DivinitySchool Address," in which Emerson asked,

In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man madesensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into hismind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds thepersuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its ownorigin in heaven? But now the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature;

it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do make, even sitting

in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves

These were critical words, and they drew strong negative response,particularly from Andrews Norton, a Biblical scholar and professor at the HarvardDivinity School, who issued his Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity in 1839

in response to the ideas Emerson put forth in his address

Like the "Divinity School Address," Theodore Parker's "A Discourse of theTransient and Permanent in Christianity" expressed rejection of establishedreligion and religious doctrine:

The stream of Christianity, as men receive it, has caught a stain from everysoil it has filtered through, so that now it is not the pure water from the well of lifewhich is offered to our lips, but streams troubled and polluted by man with mireand dirt If Paul and Jesus could read our books of theological doctrines, wouldthey accept as their teaching what men have vented in their name? Never, till theletters of Paul had faded out of his memory; never, till the words of Jesus had beentorn out from the book of life It is their notions about Christianity men have taught

as the only living word of God They have piled their own rubbish against thetemple of Truth where Piety comes up to worship; what wonder the pile seemsunshapely and like to fall? But these theological doctrines are fleeting as the leaves

on the trees

Clearly, Emerson and Parker both envisioned true religion as a personalrather than an institutional connection with the divine

A third reason for the rise of Transcendentalism was the increasing interest

in and availability of foreign literature and philosophy after 1800 Americans weretraveling and studying in Europe, and some of them brought books back toAmerica when they returned home The Reverend Joseph Stevens Buckminstertraveled to Europe in 1801, studied Biblical scholarship and European methods ofBiblical interpretation, and returned home with about three thousand volumespurchased abroad In 1815, George Ticknor and Edward Everett went to Europe tostudy They traveled extensively, studied at the University of Göttingen inGermany (in 1817, Everett because the first American ever to receive a Ph.D fromGöttingen), and returned to America to take up important academic positions atHarvard (Ticknor taught foreign literature, Everett Greek) Emerson, significantly,was one of their students Ticknor and Everett also brought back large numbers ofbooks — Ticknor for his personal library, Everett for Harvard's library CharlesFollen, a German political refugee, was another influential Harvard teacher In

1830, the first professor of German literature at Harvard, Follen was very familiarwith the writings of Kant.

During this period, too, translations into English from European worksbegan to make foreign thought and writing more available The Reverend MosesStuart, a professor at the Andover Theological Seminary, was translating grammars

of Greek and Hebrew from German in the early nineteenth century Moresignificantly, in 1813, Madame de Stäel's De L'Allemagne was translated intoEnglish under the title Germany; a New York edition came out in 1814 (Madame

de Stäel was a favorite writer of the Transcendentalists, and was seen as a kind ofarchetypal intellectual woman.)

At the same time, many in England and America were exposed to Germanthought and literature through the writings of Coleridge and Carlyle.Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (first published in 1825) was edited in 1829 byJames Marsh, who added a lengthy introduction elucidating German philosophyfor American readers Carlyle wrote a life of Schiller and translated from Goethe.Between 1838 and 1842, George Ripley edited and published, in fourteen volumes,

a set titledSpecimens of Foreign Standard Literature, which included translationsfrom French and German writings In 1840, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody opened acirculating library and bookstore on West Street in Boston to supply her comradeswith foreign works

Among the many foreign authors who influenced the Transcendentalistswere the Germans Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling, Goethe, andNovalis; the French Cousin and Constant; the English writers Coleridge, Carlyle,and Wordsworth; Plato and English Neoplatonic writers; Swedish mystic EmanuelSwedenborg; and the Eastern writings of Confucius and sacred texts of the VishnuPurana and the Bhagavadgita

1.2 Literary characteristics of Transcendentalism

The Transcendental Movement dramatically shaped the direction ofAmerican literature, although perhaps not in the ways its adherents had imagined.Many writers were and still are inspired and taught by Emerson and Thoreau inparticular, and struck out in new directions because of the literary andphilosophical lessons they had learned Walt Whitman was not the only writer toclaim that he was "simmering, simmering, simmering" until reading Emersonbrought him "to a boil." Emily Dickinson's poetic direction was quite different, butshe too was a thoughtful reader of Emerson and Fuller In his own way, evenFrederick Douglass incorporated many lessons of transcendental thought fromEmerson

Other writers would deliberately take their direction away fromtranscendentalism, toward realism and "anti-transcendentalism" or what MichaelHoffman calls "negative Romanticism"; Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne,and Herman Melville found extraordinarily creative ways to object to many aspects

of their transcendental contemporaries, even as they incorporated others FewAmerican writers since have been completely free of the influence of Emerson andThoreau, whether in reaction or imitation

Books can and have been written on this subject, and this is only anintroduction Perhaps the most visible manifestation of transcendental ideas andform today is in the developing genre of nature writing With its roots firmly in aworld-view adapted from Emerson's Nature and the literary inspiration ofThoreau's Walden in particular, this interdisciplinary yet literary genre has evolvedunder the pens of numerous writers, from John Muir and John Burroughs to writers

as diverse as Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, EdAbbey, Gary Snyder, Barbara Kingsolver and the list expands every year is agreat doorway into the genre and Web resources on it

The authors who began to come to prominence in the 1830s and were activeuntil about the end of the Civil War—the humorists, the classic New Englanders,Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and others—did their work in a new spirit, and

their achievements were of a new sort In part this was because they were in someway influenced by the broadening democratic concepts that in 1829 triumphed

in Andrew Jackson’s inauguration as president In part it was because, in thisRomantic period of emphasis upon native scenes and characters in manyliteratures, they put much of America into their books

Particularly full of vivid touches were the writings of two groups ofAmerican humorists whose works appeared between 1830 and 1867 One groupcreated several down-east Yankee characters who used commonsense arguments tocomment upon the political and social scene The most important of this groupwere Seba Smith, James Russell Lowell, and Benjamin P Shillaber These authorscaught the talk and character of New England at that time as no one else had done

In the old Southwest, meanwhile, such writers as Davy Crockett, AugustusBaldwin Longstreet, Johnson J Hooper, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, Joseph G.Baldwin, and George Washington Harrisdrew lively pictures of the ebullientfrontier and showed the interest in the common man that was a part of Jacksoniandemocracy

Although Lowell for a time was one of these writers of rather earthyhumour, his lifelong ties were to a group of New England writers associated withHarvard and Cambridge, Massachusetts—the Brahmins, as they came to be called

—at an opposite extreme Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes,and Lowell were all aristocrats, all steeped in foreign culture, all professors atHarvard Longfellow adapted European methods of storytelling and versifying tonarrative poems dealing with American history, and a few of his less didactic lyricsperfectly married technique and subject matter Holmes, in occasional poems andhis “Breakfast Table” series (1858–91), brought touches of urbanity and jocosity to

a perhaps oversober polite literature Lowell, in poems descriptive of the doors in America, put much of his homeland into verse His odes—particularly the

out-of-“Harvard Commemoration Ode” (1865)—gave fine expression to noblesentiments

Concord, Massachusetts, a village not far from Cambridge, was the home ofleaders of another important New England group The way for this group had been

prepared by the rise of a theological system, Unitarianism, which early in the 19thcentury had replaced Calvinism as the faith of a large share of the NewEnglanders Ralph Waldo Emerson, most famous of the Concord philosophers,started as a Unitarian minister but found even that liberal doctrine too confining forhis broad beliefs He became a Transcendentalist who, like other ancient andmodern Platonists, trusted to insights transcending logic and experience forrevelations of the deepest truths His scheme of things ranged from the lowestobjects and most practical chores to soaring flights of imagination and inspiredbeliefs His Essays (1841–44), Representative Men (1850), and EnglishTraits (1856) were thoughtful and poetic explanations of his beliefs; and his rough-hewn lyrics, packed with thought and feeling, were as close to 17th-centuryMetaphysical poems as any produced in his own time.

An associate of Emerson with a salty personality of his own and anindividual way of thinking, Henry David Thoreau, a sometime surveyor, labourer,and naturalist, was closer to the earthy and the practical than even Emerson was

He also was more of a humorist—a dry Yankee commentator with a flair forparadoxical phrases and sentences Finally, he was a learned man, widely read inWestern classics and books of the Orient These qualities gave distinction to AWeek on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and to Walden (1854) Thelatter was a record of his experiences and ponderings during the time he lived in ahut by Walden Pond—a defense of his belief that modern man should simplify hisdemands if need be to “suck out all the marrow of life.” In his essay “CivilDisobedience” (1849; originally titled “Resistance to Civil Government”), Thoreauexpounded his anarchistic views of government, insisting that if an injustice ofgovernment is “of such a nature that it requires injustice to another [you should]break the law [and] let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

A worldwide movement for change that exploded in the revolutions of 1848naturally attracted numerous Americans Reform was in the air, particularly in NewEngland At times even Brahmins and Transcendentalists took part William LloydGarrison, ascetic and fanatical, was a moving spirit in the fight against slavery; his

weekly newspaper, The Liberator (1831–65), despite a small circulation, was itsmost influential organ A contributor to the newspaper—probably the greatestwriter associated with the movement—was John Greenleaf Whittier His simplebut emotional poems on behalf of abolition were collected in such volumes

as Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question…(1837), Voices

of Freedom (1846), and Songs of Labor, and Other Poems (1850) The outstandingnovelist of the movement—so far as effect was concerned—was Harriet BeecherStowe Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) combined the elements of contemporaryhumour and sentimental fiction in such a powerful manner that it, according tosome, helped to precipitate the Civil War

One other group of writers—and a great novelist—contributed to theliterature of New England in this period of its greatest glory The group consisted

of several historians who combined scholarly methods learned abroad with vividand dramatic narration These included George Bancroft, author of History of theUnited States (completed in 12 volumes in 1882), and John Lothrop Motley, whotraced the history of the Dutch Republic and the United Netherlands in ninefascinating volumes (1856–74) The leading member of the group was FrancisParkman, who, in a series of books (1851–92), wrote as a historian of the fiercecontests between France and England that marked the advance of the Americanfrontier and vividly recorded his own Western travels inThe Oregon Trail (1849)

History also figured in tales and romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne, theleading New England fictionist of the period Many tales and longer works—forexample, his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850)—were set against abackground of colonial America with emphasis upon its distance in time from19th-century New England Others, such as The House of the SevenGables (1851), dealt with the past as well as the present Still others, such as TheMarble Faun (1860), were set in distant countries Remote though they were attimes from what Hawthorne called “the light of common day,” they showed deeppsychological insight and probed into complex ethicalproblems

Another great American fiction writer, for a time a neighbour and associate

of Hawthorne, wasHerman Melville After relatively little schooling, Melville went

to sea; a whaling ship, as he put it, was his “Yale College and his Harvard.” Hisfirst books were fiction in the guise of factual writing based upon experiences as asailor—Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847); so were such later worksasRedburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850) Between 1846 and 1851, however,Melville’s reading in philosophy and literary classics, as well as in Hawthorne’sallegorical and symbolic writings, gave him new interests and aims The first sign

of this interest was Mardi (1849), an uneven and disjointed transitional book thatused allegory after the model of Rabelais to comment upon ideas afloat in theperiod—about nations, politics, institutions, literature, and religion The newtechniques came to fruition in Moby Dick; or, The Whale (1851), a richly symbolicwork, complex but brilliantly integrated Only in short stories, Benito Cereno—amasterpiece of its genre—and others, in the psychological novel Pierre (1852), and

in the novelette Billy Budd (written 1890?) was Melville later to show sporadicflashes of the genius that created Moby Dick

An ardent singer of the praise of Manhattan, Walt Whitman saw less of thedark side of life than Melville did He was a believer in Jacksonian democracy, inthe splendour of the common man Inspired by the Romantic concept of a poet asprophet and also by the Transcendental philosophy of Emerson, Whitman in 1855published the first edition of Leaves of Grass As years passed, nine revised andexpanded editions of this work were published This autobiography in verse wasintended to show the ideas, beliefs, emotions, and experiences of the common man

in a great period of American individualism Whitman had a hard time winning afollowing because he was frank and unconventional in his Transcendental thinking,because he used free verse rather than rhymed or regularly metred verse, andbecause his poems were not conventionally organized Nevertheless, he steadilygained the approval of critics and in time came to be recognized as one of the greatpoets of America

Like the Revolution and the election of Andrew Jackson, the Civil War was aturning point in U.S history and a beginning of new ways of living Industrybecame increasingly important, factories rose and cities grew, and agrarianpreeminence declined The frontier, which before had always been an importantfactor in the economic scheme, moved steadily westward and, toward the end ofthe 19th century, vanished The rise of modern America was accompanied,naturally, by important mutations in literature.

Although they continued to employ some devices of the older Americanhumorists, a group of comic writers that rose to prominence was different inimportant ways from the older group Charles Farrar Browne, David Ross Locke,Charles Henry Smith, Henry Wheeler Shaw, and Edgar Wilson Nye wrote,respectively, as Artemus Ward, Petroleum V (for Vesuvius) Nasby, Bill Arp, JoshBillings, and Bill Nye Appealing to a national audience, these authors forsook thesectional characterizations of earlier humorists and assumed the roles of lessindividualized literary comedians The nature of the humour thus shifted fromcharacter portrayal to verbal devices such as poor grammar, bad spelling, andslang, incongruously combined with Latinate words and learned allusions Mostthat they wrote wore badly, but thousands of Americans in their time and some inlater times found these authors vastly amusing

The first group of fiction writers to become popular—the local colourists—took over to some extent the task of portraying sectional groups that had beenabandoned by writers of the new humour.Bret Harte, first of these writers toachieve wide success, admitted an indebtedness to prewar sectional humorists, asdid some others; and all showed resemblances to the earlier group Within a briefperiod, books by pioneers in the movement appeared: Harriet BeecherStowe’s Oldtown Folks (1869) and Sam Lawson’s Oldtown FiresideStories (1871), delightful vignettes of New England; Harte’s Luck of RoaringCamp, and Other Sketches (1870), humorous and sentimental tales

of California mining camp life; and Edward Eggleston’s HoosierSchoolmaster (1871), a novel of the early days of the settlement of Indiana Down

into the 20th century, short stories (and a relatively small number of novels) inpatterns set by these three continued to appear In time, practically every corner ofthe country had been portrayed in local-colour fiction Additional writings were thedepictions of Louisiana Creoles by George W Cable, of Virginia blacks byThomasNelson Page, of Georgia blacks by Joel Chandler Harris, of Tennesseemountaineers byMary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), of tight-lippedfolk of New England by Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E Wilkins Freeman, ofpeople of New York City by Henry Cuyler Bunnerand William Sydney Porter (“O.Henry”) The avowed aim of some of these writers was to portray realistically thelives of various sections and thus to promote understanding in a united nation Thestories as a rule were only partially realistic, however, since the authors tendednostalgically to revisit the past instead of portraying their own time, to winnow outless glamorous aspects of life, or to develop their stories with sentiment or humour.Touched by romance though they were, these fictional works were transitional

to realism, for they did portray common folk sympathetically; they did concernthemselves with dialect and mores; and some at least avoided older sentimental orromantic formulas

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was allied with literarycomedians and local colourists As a printer’s apprentice, he knew and emulatedthe prewar sectional humorists He rose to prominence in days when ArtemusWard, Bret Harte, and their followers were idols of the public His first books, TheInnocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It (1872), like several of later periods,were travel books in which affiliations with postwar professional humorists wereclearest The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883),and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), his best works, which re-createdthe life of the Mississippi valley in the past, were closest to the work of olderhumorists and local colourists Despite his flaws, he was one of America’s greatestwriters He was a very funny man He had more skill than his teachers inselecting evocative details, and he had a genius for characterization

Born and raised in Ohio, William Dean Howells was an effective advocate

of a new realistic mode of fiction writing At the start, Howells conceived ofrealism as a truthful portrayal of ordinary facets of life—with some limitations; hepreferred comedy to tragedy, and he tended to bereticent to the point ofprudishness The formula was displayed at its best in Their WeddingJourney (1872), A Modern Instance (1882), and The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885).Howells preferred novels he wrote after he encountered Tolstoy’s writings and waspersuaded by them, as he said, to “set art forever below humanity.” In such laternovels as Annie Kilburn (1888) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), he chosecharacters not only because they were commonplace but also because the stories hetold about them were commentaries upon society, government, and economics.9

Although Transcendentalism as a historical movement was limited in timefrom the mid 1830s to the late 1840s and in space to eastern Massachusetts, itsripples continue to spread through American culture Beginning as a quarrel withinthe Unitarian church, Transcendentalism's questioning of established culturalforms, its urge to reintegrate spirit and matter, its desire to turn ideas into concreteaction developed a momentum of its own, spreading from the spheres of religionand education to literature, philosophy, and social reform WhileTranscendentalism's ambivalence about any communal effort that wouldcompromise individual integrity prevented it from creating lasting institutions, ithelped set the terms for being an intellectual in America

It is easier to note its pervasive influence, though, than it is to clarify itsdoctrines The fluidity and elusiveness of Transcendentalism was registered even

by some of its most intelligent contemporaries Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example,writes: "He is German by birth, and is called Giant Transcendentalist, but as to hisform, his features, his substance, and his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity

of this huge miscreant that neither he for himself nor anybody for him has everbeen able to describe them As we rushed by the cavern's mouth we caught a hastyglimpse of him, looking somewhat like an ill-proportioned figure but considerably

more like a heap of fog and duskiness He shouted after us, but in so strange aphraseology that we knew not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged oraffrighted." On an American visit, Charles Dickens was told "that whatever wasunintelligible would certainly be transcendental" and Edgar Allan Poe instructs ayoung author to write the Tone Transcendental by using small words but turningthem upside down A Baltimore clergyman noted that "a new philosophy has risen,maintaining that nothing is everything in general, and everything is nothing inparticular."

While these quotations imply that Transcendentalism had a languageproblem compounded of foreign borrowings and oracular jargon, the underlyingdifficulty in comprehension is that it was both a cause and a result of a majorparadigm shift in epistemology, in conceptualizing how the mind knows the world,the divine, and itself Ralph Waldo Emerson, its leading exponent, described boththis shift and the derivation of the movement's name thus: "It is well known tomost of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name ofTranscendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, whoreplied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing

in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, byshowing that there was a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, whichdid not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that thesewere intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendentalforms." Transcendentalism, then, is not as much concerned with a metaphysics thattranscends our daily lives but rather with a new view of the mind that replacesLocke's empiricist, materialistic, and passive model with one emphasizing the role

of the mind itself in actively shaping experience Against Locke's claim that there

is nothing in the mind not first put there through the senses, the Transcendentalistsanswer with Leibnitz, yes, nothing except the mind itself But while Kantemphasized the power of the mind he also stressed its limits, its inability to knowreality absolutely The Transcendentalist vision went beyond Kant in insisting thatthe mind can apprehend absolute spiritual truths directly without having to go

through the detour of the senses, without the dictates of past authorities andinstitutions, and without the plodding labor of ratiocination In this senseparticularly, it was the logical or supralogical extension of both the Protestantreformation and American democratic individualism.

Well before the firebell of the Civil War, Transcendentalism as a living forceseemed to be extinguished as quickly as it flared up As Perry Miller pointed out:

"Parker killed himself with overwork, and Thoreau expended himself; Emersondissolved into aphasia, Ripley subsided into disillusion, Hedge became a Harvardprofessor Brownson became a Catholic, as did Sophia Ripley, and ElizabethPeabody became a 'character.'" There were a number of younger and secondaryfigures such as Franklin Sanborn and Thomas Wentworth Higginson whoperpetuated the movement through their memoirs and their own actions Sanbornran a progressive school in Concord, Higginson encouraged women such as EmilyDickinson to write but the energy was gone and the social forms-clubs,periodicals like The Western Literary Messenger andThe Dial, schools andcommunes had in proper Transcendentalist fashion self-destructed

CHAPTER II

ANALYSES OF LITERARY CARRIER OF TRANSCENDENTALIST WRITERS

2.1 Ralph Waldo Emerson – outstanding American transcendentalist

The great forerunner to the New Thought Movement, or the man who didmore than any other thinker of our time to prepare the popular mind to accept thenew practical idealism and gospel of optimism, was Ralph Waldo Emerson Hewas the pioneer New World diffuser of metaphysical and transcendental thoughtand Oriental philosophy; and this great movement, along certain lines, is largely aconcrete and practical application of his metaphysical generalizations and unfailingoptimism Indeed, it would be impossible to overestimate the broadening andilluminating influence on American thought exerted by Emerson By nature a poetand spiritual philosopher, this one-time Unitarian clergyman had made anexhaustive study of Christian theological thought He was ever broad-visioned andopen-minded, ever looking for the good in the literature of aspiration In thisrespect he strikingly resembled the great Mohammedan, Akbar, who welcomed tohis court scholars of all faiths, encouraging them to present their religiousconcepts; and when the Mohammedan zealots remonstrated with him, he refused toyield to the narrow-minded sectarians, saying in substance what Tennyson thusbeautifully clothes in verse:

"There is light in all,

And light with more or less of shade,

In all man's modes of worship."

The German transcendental philosophy held special charm for Emerson, andfrom it he turned to Plato, the greatest of all metaphysical philosophers of oldentimes Plato became his Bible for a time and was ever one of his chief sources ofinspiration But another rich mine of speculative philosophy awaited him Whenthe "Bhagavad Gita" fell into his hands he experienced far greater pleasure than isknown to the gold seeker, who suddenly after long and weary searching, comesupon a rich lode The "Bhagavad Gita" appealed to Emerson with compelling

power In Emerson's writings the metaphysical thought of India, Greece, andmodern transcendentalism were fused.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who ledthe transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century He was seen as achampion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures ofsociety, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays andmore than 1,500 public lectures across the United States10

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of hiscontemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism inhis 1836 essay "Nature" Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "TheAmerican Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr considered to beAmerica's "intellectual Declaration of Independence"

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revisedthem for print His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841)and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking They includethe well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet"and "Experience" Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from themid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixedphilosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom,the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship betweenthe soul and the surrounding world Emerson's "nature" was more philosophicalthan naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Natureand the Soul" Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist orpandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."

He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, andhis work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him.When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of

the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of HenryDavid Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, a son ofRuth Haskins and the Rev William Emerson, a Unitarian minister He was namedafter his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother RebeccaWaldo Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; theothers were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles Three other children

—Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—died in childhood Emerson wasentirely of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since theearly colonial period11

Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than twoweeks before Emerson's eighth birthday Emerson was raised by his mother, withthe help of the other women in the family; his aunt Mary Moody Emerson inparticular had a profound effect on him She lived with the family off and on andmaintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863

Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812, when

he was nine In October 1817, at 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and wasappointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetchdelinquent students and send messages to faculty Midway through his junior year,Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series

of notebooks that would be called "Wide World" He took outside jobs to cover hisschool expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as anoccasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel in Waltham, Massachusetts Byhis senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo Emersonserved as Class Poet; as was custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard'sClass Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was

18 He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class

of 59 people

In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate Hefirst went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the weather was still toocold He then went further south, to St Augustine, Florida, where he took longwalks on the beach and began writing poetry While in St Augustine he made theacquaintance of Prince Achille Murat, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte Muratwas two years his senior; they became good friends and enjoyed one another'scompany The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society,philosophy, and government Emerson considered Murat an important figure in hisintellectual education

While in St Augustine, Emerson had his first experience of slavery At onepoint, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave auction was takingplace in the yard outside He wrote, "One ear therefore heard the glad tidings ofgreat joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going!'"

After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother Williamin a school for youngwomen] established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school

in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother William went to Göttingen tostudy divinity, Emerson took charge of the school Over the next several years,Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster He then went to Harvard DivinitySchool Emerson's brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the office

of the lawyer Daniel Webster, after graduating from Harvard first in his class.Edward's physical health began to deteriorate, and he soon suffered a mentalcollapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June 1828 at age 23.Although he recovered his mental equilibrium, he died in 1834, apparently fromlong-standing tuberculosis Another of Emerson's bright and promising youngerbrothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis, making him thethird young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years

Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, NewHampshire, on Christmas Day, 1827, and married her when she was 18 The couplemoved to Boston, with Emerson's mother, Ruth, moving with them to help takecare of Ellen, who was already ill with tuberculosis Less than two years later, on

February 8, 1831, Ellen died, at the age of 20, after uttering her last words: "I havenot forgotten the peace and joy" Emerson was heavily affected by her death andvisited her grave in Roxbury daily In a journal entry dated March 29, 1832, hewrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin".

Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor, and hewas ordained on January 11, 1829 His initial salary was $1,200 a year, increasing

to $1,400 in July, but with his church role he took on other responsibilities: he wasthe chaplain of the Massachusetts legislature and a member of the Boston schoolcommittee His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, facingthe imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs

After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods,writing in his journal in June 1832, "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be agood minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry The profession is antiquated

In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers".Hisdisagreements with church officials over the administration ofthe Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to hisresignation in 1832 As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is notsuitable to me That is reason enough why I should abandon it" As one Emersonscholar has pointed out, "Doffing the decent black of the pastor, he was free tochoose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of the thinker not confined within thelimits of an institution or a tradition"

merson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in EnglishTraits (1856) He left aboard the brig Jasper on Christmas Day, 1832, sailing first

to Malta During his European trip, he spent several months in Italy, visiting Rome,Florence and Venice, among other cities When in Rome, he met with John StuartMill, who gave him a letter of recommendation to meetThomas Carlyle He went

to Switzerland, and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit Voltaire's home

in Ferney, "protesting all the way upon the unworthiness of his memory".He thenwent on to Paris, a "loud modern New York of a place", where he visited the Jardindes Plantes He was greatly moved by the organization of plants according

to Jussieu's system of classification, and the way all such objects were related andconnected As Robert D Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of insight into theinterconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almostvisionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science".

Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth, SamuelTaylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle Carlyle in particular was a strong influence

on him; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the UnitedStates for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to persuade Carlyle to come toAmerica to lecture The two maintained a correspondence until Carlyle's death in

1881

Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with hismother in Newton, Massachusetts, until October 1834, when he moved to Concord,Massachusetts, to live with his step-grandfather Dr Ezra Ripley at what was laternamedThe Old Manse Seeing the budding Lyceum movement, which providedlectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer OnNovember 5, 1833, he made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500lectures, "The Uses of Natural History", in Boston This was an expanded account

of his experience in Paris In this lecture, he set out some of his important beliefsand the ideas he would later develop in his first published essay, "Nature":

Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it isnot a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language puttogether into a most significant and universal sense I wish to learn this language,not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that iswritten in that tongue12

On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lydia Jackson proposingmarriage Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th In July 1835, he bought

a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts,which he named Bush; it is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson

12 Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1959) Early Lectures 1833–36 Stephen Whicher, ed Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press ISBN 978-0-674-22150-5

House Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town He gave alecture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the town of Concord onSeptember 12, 1835 Two days later, he married Lydia Jackson in her home town

of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in Concord together withEmerson's mother on September 15

Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call herQueenie, and sometimes Asia, and she called him Mr Emerson Their childrenwere Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson Edward Waldo Emersonwas the father of Raymond Emerson Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian'ssuggestion

Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, and later supported his familyfor much of his life He inherited a fair amount of money after his first wife'sdeath, though he had to file a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get

it He received $11,600 in May 1834, and a further $11,674.49 in July 1837 In

1834, he considered that he had an income of $1,200 a year from the initialpayment of the estate, equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor

On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature, Emersonmet with Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnamand George Ripley to planperiodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals This was the beginning oftheTranscendental Club, which served as a center for the movement Its firstofficial meeting was held on September 19, 1836 On September 1, 1837, womenattended a meeting of the Transcendental Club for the first time EmersoninvitedMargaret Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his homebefore the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening get-together Fuller would prove to be an important figure in transcendentalism

Emerson anonymously published his first essay, "Nature", on September 9,

1836 A year later, on August 31, 1837, he delivered his now-famous Phi BetaKappa address, "The American Scholar", then entitled "An Oration, Deliveredbefore the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection

of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in

1849 Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did so, at his own expense, in

an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a month In the speech, Emersondeclared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create

a writing style all their own and free from Europe James Russell Lowell, who was

a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on ourliterary annals".Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it

"an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address"

In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau Though they had likelymet as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep ajournal?" The question went on to be a lifelong inspiration for Thoreau Emerson'sown journal was published in 16 large volumes, in the definitive HarvardUniversity Press edition issued between 1960 and 1982 Some scholars considerthe journal to be Emerson's key literary work

In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy ofhistory at the Masonic Temple in Boston This was the first time he managed alecture series on his own, and it was the beginning of his career as a lecturer Theprofits from this series of lectures were much larger than when he was paid by anorganization to talk, and he continued to manage his own lectures often throughouthis lifetime He eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across thenorthern United States as far as St Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, andCalifornia

On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard DivinitySchool, to deliver the school's graduation address, which came to be known as the

"Divinity School Address".13

2.2 Main features of literary activity of Emerson

The transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial, inJuly 1840 They planned the journal as early as October 1839, but work did notbegin until the first week of 1840 George Ripley was the managingeditor Margaret Fuller was the first editor, having been hand-picked by Emersonafter several others had declined the role Fuller stayed on for about two years,when Emerson took over, utilizing the journal to promote talented young writersincluding Ellery Channing and Thoreau

In 1841 Emerson published Essays, his second book, which included thefamous essay "Self-Reliance" His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism andfalse independence", but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris Thisbook, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's contributions to datelaid the groundwork for his international fame

In January 1842 Emerson's first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever Emersonwrote of his grief in the poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is true dying"), and theessay "Experience" In the same month, William James was born, and Emersonagreed to be his godfather

Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of ahundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good orchard andgrounds".Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre (360,000 m2) farm in Harvard,Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands, a communitybased on Utopian ideals inspired in part by transcendentalism The farm would runbased on a communal effort, using no animals for labor; its participants would eat

no meat and use no wool or leather Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for notengaging in the experiment himself Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would be asuccess "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end withsaying, Give us much land and money" Even Alcott admitted he was not preparedfor the difficulty in operating Fruitlands "None of us were prepared to actualizepractically the ideal life of which we dreamed So we fell apart", he wrote After itsfailure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord which Alcottnamed "Hillside"

The Dial ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as anend to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever published in thiscountry" (An unrelated magazine of the same name was published in severalperiods through 1929.)

In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, Essays: SecondSeries This collection included "The Poet", "Experience", "Gifts", and an essayentitled "Nature", a different work from the 1836 essay of the same name

Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much ofthe rest of the country He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s he was giving

as many as 80 lectures per year He addressed the Boston Society for the Diffusion

of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester Lyceum, among others Emerson spoke

on a wide variety of subjects, and many of his essays grew out of his lectures Hecharged between $10 and $50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as

$2,000 in a typical winter lecture season This was more than his earnings fromother sources In some years, he earned as much as $900 for a series of six lectures,and in another, for a winter series of talks in Boston, he netted $1,600 Heeventually gave some 1,500 lectures in his lifetime His earnings allowed him toexpand his property, buying 11 acres (45,000 m2) of land by Walden Pond and afew more acres in a neighboring pine grove He wrote that he was "landlord andwaterlord of 14 acres, more or less"

Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy through the works of theFrench philosopher Victor Cousin In 1845, Emerson's journals show he wasreading theBhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas

He was strongly influenced by Vedanta, and much of his writing has strong shadesofnondualism One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay "TheOver-soul":

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles Meantime withinman is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which everypart and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE And this deep power in which

we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and

perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and thespectacle, the subject and the object, are one We see the world piece by piece, asthe sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shiningparts, is the soul

In 1847-48, he toured the British Isles He also visited Paris betweenthe French Revolution of 1848 and the bloody June Days When he arrived, he sawthe stumps of trees that had been cut down to form barricades in the February riots

On May 21, he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of mass celebrations forconcord, peace and labor He wrote in his journal, "At the end of the year we shalltake account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees." The trip left animportant imprint on Emerson's later work His 1856 book English Traits is basedlargely on observations recorded in his travel journals and notebooks Emersonlater came to see the American Civil War as a "revolution" that shared commonground with the European revolutions of 1848

In a speech in Concord, Massachusetts on May 3, 1851, Emerson denouncedthe Fugitive Slave Act:

The act of Congress is a law which every one of you will break on theearliest occasion a law which no man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss

of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of gentleman

That summer, he wrote in his diary:

This filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century by people whocould read and write I will not obey it

In February 1852 Emerson and James Freeman Clarke and William HenryChanning edited an edition of the works and letters of Margaret Fuller, who haddied in 1850 Within a week of her death, her New York editor, Horace Greeley,suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and HerFriends, be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease haspassed away" Published under the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten The three editors were notconcerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller was temporary