The following educational materials have been approved by the Council of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,

 IN THE NORTH – ECONOMIC AND

SOCIAL CHANGES

 Industrialization
 Urbanization
 Factories with poor working conditions, wage
labor, first unions
 A new breed of materialism
ATEBELLUM SOUTH (Antebellum period
typically refers to America from gaining
independence to the Civil War)

 Slavery provided the economic

foundation that supported the dominant
planter ruling class.
 A few extremely wealthy plantation
owners ruled.
 The structure of white supremacy in AS
was hierarchical and patriarchal.
 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION, growing
NATIONAL SELF-AWARENESS, and
increasing POLITICAL, SOCIAL, and
REGIONAL POLARIZATION, in particular
during the presidencies of ANDREW
JACKSON (1829-1837) and JAMES K. POLK
(1845-1849)
 The addition of territory through war with
Mexico – inflamed slavery/antislavery
tensions
 AMERICAN UNITARIANISM – belief that
God is one being instead of the Trinity of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

 The Unitarians believed in human capacity for

spiritual, moral, and intellectual improvement,
denied the Calvinistic concept of innate
depravity and the doctrine of predestination.
 CALVINISM – depravity of humankind, the
necessity of God's intervention for us to be
saved (We don't deserve anything. There is no
way for human beings to protect themselves,
except through the reception of God's grace)

 The UNITARIANS stress not the death of

Christ, but the life and teachings of Christ.

 A fundamentally optimistic view of human

nature – God extends salvation to everyone.
  Belief in
RATIONAL PROGRESS,
SCIENTIFIC IMPROVEMENT
MATERIAL OF SOCIETY and
EMPIRICAL
of the
INDIVIDUAL
 TOLERANCE
 Postulated that the human mind at
birth was devoid of conscience, moral
understanding, and intuition
(TABULA RASA), all of which
developed through EXPERIENCE

 Insisted that there was nothing in the

intellect which had not previously
been in the experience of the SENSES
 Marked by a reaction against classical
formalism and extreme rationalism of
the Enlightenment

 HUMANISTIC political and social outlook

 INDIVIDUAL – at the center of the universe
 Against DEHUMANIZATION, MATERIALISM,
INDUSTRIALIZATION
 INTUITIVE
 SPIRITUAL
 SELF-RELIANCE
 INDEPENDENCE
 INDIVIDUALITY
 Emphasizes EMOTION rather than
REASON
 IDEAL rather than REALITY
Individual REBELLION
The symbolic interpretation of the
historic PAST
Subjects from MYTH and FOLKLORE
Glorification of NATURE, faraway
settings
SENTIMENTALISM
Nobility of the uncivilized man and
simple life
GOTHIC themes – supernatural,
mysterious
 American literature came of age in the 1850s,
the period we call AMERICAN
RENAISSANCE (three generations after the
country achieved its political independence)

 American Renaissance literature is almost

exclusively romantic literature
 Religious, philosophical, and literary
movement 1830s – 1850s

 Mostly New Englanders (mainly around

Boston, Cambridge, and Concord,
Massachusetts)

 Wanted to create American literary

independence (authentic American literature)
 TRANSCENDENTALISM = a philosophy that
asserts the primacy of the SPIRITUAL over the
MATERIAL and EMPIRICAL

 The term coined by IMMANUEL KANT as a

response to the philosophy of LOCKE.

 According to Kant, there are some ideas and

aspects of knowledge which are beyond what
the senses can perceive, but are INTUITIONS
of the mind itself – he named them
TRANSCENDENTAL FORMS.
 The TRANSCENDENT is the fundamental
reality
 The ultimate truth transcends the physical
world
 Transcendentalists were not a cohesive
organized group
 RalphWaldo EMERSON, Henry David
THOREAU, Walt WHITMAN, Amos
Bronson ALCOTT, Martin VAN
BURREN, Margaret FULLER
 The more PESSIMISTIC stream of American
Romanticists (should be differentiated from the
Transcendentalists)
 Edgar
Allan POE, Herman MELVILLE, Nathaniel
HAWTHORNE, Henry Wadsworth LONGFELLOW

 Transcendentalism, on the other hand,

incorporated the Romantic emphasis on the
individual and the Unitarian belief in the
goodness and perfectibility of man.
 Transcendentalism was more of a call to action
than a precise, logical line of thought. It urged
people to break free of the customs and
traditions of the past and to listen to the spirit
of God inside them

 Most of the transcendentalists became

involved in SOCIAL REFORM
MOVEMENTS (anti-slavery, women's
suffrage, Native American education
and rights, world peace)
 PLATO and English NEO-PLATONIC
WRITERS – belief in the IDEAL state of
existence – emphasis on INDIVIDUALITY,
primacy of intellectual thinking over material
reality (PLATO – this world is a copy of the
ideal world where forms exist in absolute
reality)

 BRITISH ROMANTICISM = primacy of the

INDIVIDUAL over the community
(COLERIDGE, CARLYLE, WORDSWORTH)
 GERMAN ROMANTICISTS:
 SCHILLER, GOETHE, and NOVALIS

 GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS:
 KANT, FICHTE, SCHELLING, and HEGEL

 CONFUCIUS
 HINDU sacred texts (Vishnu Purana and
Bhagavadgita)
 EMANUEL SWEDENBORG (1688-172)
 Swedish scientist, Christian mystic, theologian,
philosopher
 Belief in the absolute unity of God – not Trinity
 Christian interpretation of neo-platonic thought
 there is a kind of infinite and invisible power to
all creation and that is God
 All institutions (social, political, economic,
religious) – suspect as being false, materialistic
 Emphasized personal INSIGHT,
INDIVIDUALITY, and INTUITION
 The affirmation of the right of individuals to
follow truth as they see it, even when contrary
to established laws or customs
 Importance of a direct relationship with God
and with Nature
 ONENESS = GOD + NATURE + MAN

 OVERSOUL = the divine spirit or mind that is

present everywhere, an all-pervading supreme
mind. A kind of a cosmic unity between man,
god and nature.

 In each manifestation of God man can discover

all universal laws at work.
 Transcendentalists gave numerous PUBLIC
LECTURES
 During the period between about 1825 and the Civil
War, there was a proliferation of institutions
designed to enrich the average person and to
promote self-culture.
 THE LYCEUM (an organization for public lectures,
concerts – grew out of the Enlightenment ideal of
making knowledge available to all), the social
library, public library movement, museums
 Transcendentalist periodical “THE DIAL“

 Established experimental living communities

(FRUITLANDS at Harvard, BROOK FARM at West
Roxbury, Thoreau's cottage at Walden Pond)
1. Think for yourself 8. Oneness
2. Trust thyself 9. Technological
3. Society, advancement,
institutions industrialization,
social progress
4. Self-reliance
10. Living in the
5. Charity present moment
6. Individualism 11. Traveling
7. Religion
 Insist on yourself, never imitate others. Every
great man is unique
 Trust thyself
 It makes no difference to Emerson whether his
actions are praised or ignored. The important
thing is to act independently
 “What I must do is all that concerns me, not
what the people think“ (don't think you must
be doing what others expect of you)

 Think for yourself – great minds like Moses,

Plato, Milton did that.

 To be great is to be misunderstood – Socrates,

Luther, Copernicus, Jesus, Galileo, Newton
 The need for each man to think for himself, not
to give up their freedom as individuals to
constricting beliefs and customs, to common
values, to established institutions.

 Importance of an individual’s resisting

pressure to conform to external norms
 SOCIETY – in conspiracy against the manhod
of every one of its members

 SELF-RELIANCE vs. CONFORMITY

 The self-reliant individual should be able to

live in the world and improve it, not be just
another product of it.
 Universe is an all-encompassing whole
embracing man, nature, matter, and spirit

 the ultimate source of truth is within

ourselves.

 One should pay attention to the “inner light“

 Emerson refuses to support morality through
donations to organizations rather than
directly to individuals

 “The civilized man has built a coach, but has

lost the use of his feet“ – skeptical of
technological advancement and social
progress
 The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a
hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient
distance, and it straightens itself to the average
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself,
and will explain your other genuine actions.

 What I must do is all that concerns me, not what

the people think . . . the great man is he who in the
midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the
independence of solitude.
 Your gifts – whatever you discover them to be –
can be used to bless or curse the world.
 None of us alone can save the world.
Together – that is another possibility.
 Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the
manhood of every one of its members.
 Insist on yourself; never imitate.
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one
side as it gains on the other.
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the
use of his feet.

 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the

water of which it is composed does not.

 Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is

infirmity of will.

 Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or

wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our
hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men
have my blood and I all men's.
 He points out the forces that dull and subjugate
the inner man, materialism and constant labor
in particular.

 The reform of society rests within the

individual. Each man is a microcosm. If he
works at improving himself, he reforms the
world more effectively than can any
philanthropic scheme or organization.
 Thoreau emphasizes the crushing, numbing
effect of materialism and commercialism on the
individual’s life. Property ownership and
technological progress consume men before
they have a chance to consider how they might
live. The author encourages his contemporaries
to be content with less materially.
 To Thoreau, the cost of something is not so
much its actual cost in dollars and cents, but
the amount of life that must be exchanged for
it.
 Each man must search for his own path, and
the search must take place within himself.
 What is moral, what is right, must be found in
the heart of each individual person.
 Truth lies within the individual
 Awareness of the importance of the PRESENT
moment
 Man is rich in proportion to the things that he can
afford to let alone.

 I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one

advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common
hours. . . . If you have built castles in the air, your
work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.
 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation –
SLAVES TO THEIR OWN DESIRES AND
POSSESSIONS
 One of the most influential political tracts ever
written by an American.

 Published posthumously in 1866

 Profoundly influenced MOHANDAS GANDHI

and MARTIN LUTHER KING
 Thoreau’s response to being imprisoned for
being a tax rebel – refused to pay the poll tax in
protest to slavery

 An analysis of the individual’s relationship to

the state

 Focuses on why men obey governmental law

even when they believe it to be unjust
 “That government is best which governs the
least. . . . That government is best which
governs not at all“ (questions DEMOCRACY –
is it really based on equality and individual
rights?)

 The majority rule because they are physically

the strongest.

 Can there be a government that follows the

conscience?
 People choose the government, but does it
serve them in the end?

 Example – Mexican war – U.S. invading army

 Some support the war; all support it through

taxes
 Importance to react to injustice, even at your
own expense = COURAGE
 Mass of men are passive and serve the state as
a machine (inaction = action)
 VOTING = poor vehicle of reform
 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (if everyone refused to
pay taxes) = A PEACABLE REVOLUTION – a
means to resist the tyranny of the government
 Having developed the image of the
government as a machine (that may or may
not do enough good to counterbalance what
evil it commits), he urges rebellion. According
to Thoreau, the opponents of reform are not
politicians but ordinary people cooperating
with the system.
 Although Thoreau asserts that we have other,
higher duties than eradicating institutional
wrong, we must make sure that we are not
guilty through compliance. The individual
should not blindly support the political
structures and laws, but should act with
principle, and even break the law if necessary.

 MORALITY vs. LAW

 Do what you think is right (similar to

Emerson)
 The individual is the final judge of right and
wrong

 “I cannot for an instant recognize that political

organization as my government which is the
slave’s government also.”

 “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the

law, so much as for the right. The only
obligation which I have a right to assume is to
do at any time what I think right.”
 “Government may express the will of the
majority, but it may also express nothing
more than the will of elite politicians.”

 “A really free and enlightened state . . . can

afford to be just to all men.”
 Thoreau also wonders about the psychology of
men who would fight a war and, perhaps, kill
others out of obedience.

 “What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I

do not lend myself to the wrong which I
condemn.”
 “If the alternative is to keep all just men in
prison, or give up war and slavery, the State
will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand
men were not to pay their tax-bills this year,
that would not be a violent and bloody
measure, as it would be to pay them, and
enable the State to commit violence and shed
innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of
a peaceable revolution.”
“The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
EDMUND BURKE
 SOURCES
 Andrews, William L. “North American Slave Narratives.”
Documenting the American South. Web. 20 Nov. 2010
<http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/intro.html>.
 Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American
Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print.
 Elliott, Emory, ed. The Columbia Literary History of the United States.
New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Print.
 Lewicki, Zbigniew, ed. A Handbook of American Literature for
Students of English. Warsaw: Cultural Section, US Embassy, 2003.
PDF.
 Transcendentalism. Web. 11 Nov. 2008
<http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm>.
 The Web of American Transcendentalism. Web. 11 Nov. 2008
<http://transcendentalism.tamu.edu>.