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The relationship between individual and nature in Emerson’s works
Romanticism and nature
The relationship between individual and nature in Emerson’s works
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People undergo changes with every passing generation, but literature has remained a constant driving force throughout. There are four fundamental classifications of literature: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, and Existentialism. Romanticism centers around "art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth" (VanSpanckeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). VanSpanckeren states that Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most influential writers of the Romantic era, asserts in his essay "The Poet": "For all men live by truth, and stand in need in expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is expression" (qtd. in "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). Romantic literature emerged as a reaction to the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period (Holman and Harmon). "Romanticism arose so gradually and exhibited so many phases that a satisfactory definition is not possible" (Holman and Harmon). According to VanSpanckeren, the development of the self became a major theme in Romanticism, and self-awareness was a primary method. The Romantic theory posits that self and nature are the same, and self-awareness is not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe (VanSpankeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). With this newfound idea of self, new compound words with positive meanings emerged: self-realization, self-expression, and self-reliance (VanSpanckeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). Romanticism stresses individualism, affirms the value of the common person, and looks to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values (VanSpanckeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). In New England, Romanticism prospered, and the New England transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates, were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the ideas of Romanticism (VanSpanckeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). The transcendentalists believed that the soul of each individual was identical with the world (VanSpanckeren, "The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets"). Some examples of Romantic writers include the New England Transcendentalists, such as Emerson, Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and William Ellery Channing, as well as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe (VanSpanckeren, “The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets”). The New England Transcendentalists elevated the expression of philosophical and religious ideas to a high level through their essays and lectures (Holman and Harmon). In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first publication, Nature, he expresses his Romantic view of life and how human beings should enjoy the universe. In the opening of the essay, he writes, "Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should we not have a poetry of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?" Embosomed in nature for a season, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship (qtd. in VanSpanckeren, “The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets”). Oliver Wendell Holmes’ work was renowned for his refreshing versatility (VanSpanckeren, “The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets”). His works interpreted everything from society and language to medicine and human nature (VanSpanckeren, “The Romantic Period: Essayists and Poets”). In one of his philosophical poems, “The Chambered Nautilus,” he writes in the last line, “Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!” (Holmes 35). Edgar Allan Poe’s poems told of solitary individuals witnessing lonely visions from the grave (VanSpanckeren, “The Romantic Period: Fiction”).
Transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson conveyed strong, specific viewpoints on the world through their writing. The transcendentalist ideals differ vastly with the lives lived by most of the modern world today. Firstly, the two differ on views of self-reliance. Secondly, they have different outlooks on the government and organized groups. Lastly, transcendentalist and modern American views vary by the way they view nature. These differences between transcendentalism and life today are essential in understanding life then, as well as life now.
Romanticism was a movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the Neoclassicism of the previous centuries. The romanticism movement in literature consists of a few of the following characteristics: intuition over fact, imagination over fact, and the stretch and alteration of the truth. The death of a protagonist may be prolonged and/or exaggerated, but the main point was to signify the struggle of the individual trying to break free, which was shown in “The Fall of the House Usher” (Prentice Hall Literature 322).
The 1830s was a time of serious religious conflict. Many people, especially authors, had different opinions on how to find true spirituality. In the end, authors in America created Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement that searches for individual truth through spiritual reflection, complete solitude, and a deep connection with nature. Because this was established by authors, many of them wrote different pieces reflecting and using the beliefs of Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson was considered to be the father of Transcendentalism. He wrote many influential pieces that follow and emphasize major Transcendental beliefs. The major beliefs include the over-soul, nature, and senses. In addition to those, there are minor beliefs and overall ways of living. These beliefs were included in Transcendental pieces as a general way to share the belief and to create a movement. Due to the use of nature, senses, and the over-soul as its three core Transcendental beliefs, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature” successfully explain the fundamentals of Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism believed in the importance of intuition, of the divine spirit uniting all souls, and that true revelation and insight could only take place in nature, where things are most pure. Emerson’s talk that night was called the, “The American Scholar”. In it, he exhorted his audience to throw off the traditions or European scholarships and thought and define for themselves a new American way of thinking. (Shmoop Editorial Team) Twenty-year-old Thoreau was completely gripped. He approached Emerson afterward to introduce himself. The two men had a lot in common and became good friends. Emerson became an important mentor to Thoreau. His impact on the young man’s life was immediately apparent. Emerson was a big fan of journal keeping and encouraged Thoreau to do the same. “So I make my first entry to-day,” Thoreau wrote in his first journal entry on 22 October 1837. Thoreau kept up the habit all of his life, and his journals are an important insight into his philosophies. Also, around this time, he changed his name to Henry
During the nineteenth century, literary writers were encouraged in transcendentalism. Their main focus was on capturing the spirituality in nature. For example, authors such as Henry Thoreau and Ralph Emerson were dominating the world of poetry and prose with their tales of nature. From Thoreau's' journey through the Maine Woods to Emerson's Nature, the transcendental ere, was in the main stream. Yet, not all of the nineteenth century writers shared this same viewpoint. As a matter of fact, one writer emerging, who proved to be just as prominent, had a viewpoint in direct opposition of his contemporaries. The great Edgar Allen Poe, though born during the same period and encountered the same influences, would emerge as a different writer. "Those others", Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whittier and Holmes, "turned toward Wordsworth while Poe, took Coleridge as his loadstar in his search for a consistent theory of art" (Perkins 1236).
Romanticism has been described as a “‘Protestantism in the arts and letters’, an ideological shift on the grand scale from conservative to liberal ideas”. (Keenan, 2005) It was a movement into the era of imagination and feelings instead of objective reasoning.
... a piece of literature written in the romanticism age than the neo-classicism age. The books are very different from each other, and both use their respective literary definitions to show the reader the relevance to the time frame in which it was written. All in all, both of the conclusions were appropriate and expected, each finding an answer to the long struggle with their problems. Romanticism literature offers more to the reader: more detail, more emotion, and a more clear, concise dilemma that could relate to readers more than neo-classicism.
The transcendental movement took place solely in America, but was “stimulated by European and German Romanticism” (Goodman); moreover, the “Transcendentalists stood at the heart of the American Renaissance” (Hampson). According to Richard Eldridge, the Romantics, who preceded the Transcendental movement, “represent[ed] ‘the effort to envision human possibilities of the achievement of value’ more strongly and self-consciously than Enlightenment thought did before it, and offers a compelling vision of the human as ‘both a free, noumenal agent and an embodied, natural being’” (Johnson 251). The Romantics, however, had a more negative view on the world around them. The Transcendental
King, Neil. The Romantics: English Literature in Its Historical, Cultural, and Social Contexts. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Print.
Romanticism was an artistic and philosophical time period that occurred in Europe during the late 18th century. Many forms of art were introduced at this time, as were forms of poetry and unorthodox ideals coming from the creators of these pieces. The poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats all shared aspects of nature and their personal emotions displayed through literary allusions. They break away from social norms, and even artistic norms, which was the aim of the artists during this part of literary history.
He became friends with Emerson in 1837. Thoreau is both romantic and naturalist. The relationship between man and nature in Emerson and Thoreau differs from the “Nature”, in which he established a new way for America’s hatchling society to regard the world. During that time American culture is highly influenced by the European culture so, Emerson through his speech he wants to suggest the real American culture and ask his citizens to preserve the essence of the real American culture, but according to the American story the world began with a single man and man is divided into several other man so that a work can be complete successfully because of increase in division among man the man no longer worked effectively with each other to get a better work. Emerson states that a true scholar must have great knowledge of nature to help in increasing self-awareness.
Every individual has countless experiences that shape their perspective and form their identity; physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and otherwise. Every day to day normal, as well as abnormal experience that we humans have shape who we are as people regardless if we choose to acknowledge them or not. In the action of sharing their personal experiences through anecdote, Savage and Vaid contribute to their emotional appeal by increasing empathy between themselves and their readers. To no surprise, Dan Savage and his partner Terry were the first one to make an It Gets Better video. In the first attempt to shoot their first video, it was an emotional appeal that showed the magnitude to which the couple was bullied in their youth. “We did two
Romanticism was an artistic and literary movement that began in the late 18th century Europe that stressed the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, glorification of the past and nature, and departure from forms of classicism. The movement emerged as a reaction against the ideas
“Transcendentalists were influenced by romanticism, particularly in the areas of self-examination, individualism, and the beauties of nature and humankind. Fixed by the Prospect of shaping the literary traditions of a new nation, the American Romantics tended to issue pronouncements about fundamentals, for example, the role of the artist in expressing, even creating, a national identity. Henry David Thoreau advocated American expression supported by Romantic-transcendentalist theories of organicism articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nathaniel Hawthorne justified an indigenous romance fiction to plumb the depths of the human heart” (Allison, 1). They believed that a direct connection between the universe and the individual soul existed. Intuition, rather than reason, was regarded as the highest human ability. “Transcendental philosophy was based on the premise that truth is innate in all of creation and that the knowledge of it is intuitive rather than rational” (Wilson, 3). Other philosophies include returning to the simpler things of life and that man should love nature and learn from it. “Hawthorne, in his purpose to reveal the truth of the human heart, placed man in nature” (Elder, 49). “It is the true, the beautiful, the spiritual essence in nature and man. This grand and beautiful idea, of which diverse nature seems to be part, is the high reality-invisible, and truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger” (Elder, 23). Ralph Waldo Emerson's tendency of thought is toward the idealist philosophy in which s...
By the end of the eighteenth century, thought gradually moved towards a new trend called Romanticism. If the Age of Enlightenment was a period of reasoning, rational thinking and a study of the material world where natural laws were realized then Romanticism is its opposite. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental (Forsyth, Romanticism). It began in Germany and England in the eighteenth century and by the late 1820s swept through Europe and then swiftly made its way to the Western world. The romantics overthrew the philosophical ways of thinking during the Enlightenment, they felt that reason and rationality were too harsh and instead focused on the imagination. Romantics believed in freedom and spontaneous creativity rather than order and imitation, they believed people should think for themselves instead of being bound to the fixed set of beliefs of the Enlightenment.