1. Romanticism & Transcendentalism: Shifting the Focus to the Individual
American Literature 1800 – 1860
Romanticism & Transcendentalism:
Shifting the Focus to the Individual

2. American Romanticism 1800-1860
The Industrial Revolution brought economic growth to the United Sates, and it transformed American society.
Hundreds of new factories were built
Expansion of roads and canals were built
The railroad and the steamboat were invented

3. Industrial Revolution
This Revolution created a division between the North and South,
The North was run by factories
The South was run by farms
This division later caused the Civil War.

4. Roots of Romanticism
A movement in art and thought that dominated Europe and the U.S. throughout the 1800s
Romantic writers valued imagination and feeling over intellect and reason.
Some went bright and cheery, life full of goodness and possibility (Transcendentalism)
While others went dark and gloomy, life full of evil and insanity (gothic, brooding literature)

5. You could see it in the art too
Thomas Cole: The Connecticut River

6. Thomas Cole—Ruined Tower

7. Thomas Cole--The Titans’ Goblet

8. But remember, the Europeans started this movement before we did…
John Henry Fuseli (German)—The Nightmare

9. Caspar David Friedrich (German)—The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

10. My favorite!
JMW Turner—Rain Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway

11. Transcendentalism Believed that intuition is a valuable guide
Truth is in nature
Rejected organized religion
Viewed individual conscience as superior to law

12. Transcendentalism
Kantian Philosophy—the transcending, or going beyond empiricism (scientific knowledge) and ascertaining a priori, the fundamental principles of human knowledge.

13. They were:
Well-educated, trying to create a uniquely American body of literature (wanted to achieve literary independence)
Mostly New Englanders (Boston, mostly)
A generation struggling to define
spirituality and religion

14. Transcendentalists Became involved in social reform
Anti-slavery
Women’s rights
Believed that at the level of the human soul, all people had access to divine inspiration and sought and loved freedom and knowledge and truth

15. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay, “Nature”
is considered the moment transcendentalism became a major cultural movement.

16. The spiritual connection among all living things Optimism
Civil Disobedience
Oversoul:
The spiritual connection among all living things
Optimism
Nature
Simplicity
Individuality
Intuition
Self-Reliance
Transcendentalism

17. Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the father of Transcendentalism; however, Henry David Thoreau also made a huge contribution to it.
Others: Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman.

18. Transcendentalists
Believed that a new era of American life was at hand
Criticized society for unthinking conformity
Urged that each individual find, in Emerson's words, “an original relation to the universe” (O, 3)
From The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

19. Modern Transcendentalist: Chris McCandless
College graduate
Eschewed all of his savings and personal belongings
Wanted to survive off of as little as possible
Cherished the beauty and fragility of nature

20. Impact of Transcendentalism Today
Transcendentalists’ Impact:
1960s Civil Rights: MLK continually promoted peaceful resistance to unjust authority: civil disobedience. This is a value that finds its roots in Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience”
 National Parks: John Muir (as WI man!) was influenced by the Transcendental philosophers of his time, deciding to explore the natural wildlife of our country. His writings later influenced President Teddy Roosevelt in his decision to establish the National Park system. So, if you’ve been to a Nation Park, you should thank the Transcendentalists 
Other writers/artists/thinkers influenced by the Transcendentalists
Walt Whitman (poet, Leaves of Grass)
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
John Muir (famous naturalist and nature writer)
John Burroughs (famous naturalist and nature writer)
Robert Frost (poet, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”)
Wallace Stevens (modernist poet)
The Indigo Girls
Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam
Movie, Into the Wild
President Theodore Roosevelt
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mahatma Gandhi