American Lit

Transcend: [verb] to go beyond the limits of; exceed; be above and independent of the physical universe

“ We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." Ralf Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalism was a philosophical, spiritual and literary movement that flourished in the US in the decades before the Civil War: the antebellum period.

Philosophically Transcendentalists believed: in a connection between all living elements and human beings through the attainment of knowledge, people can transcend the limitations of the physical senses and attain spiritual awareness and enlightenment.

Knowledge resides within an individual and can be accessed through meditation, self awareness and communing with nature.

Spiritually: Personal belief and meditation was valued over organized worship and services. No mediator, such as a priest or minister, was necessary for a person to experience a connection with the divine.

They contended that there is a spark of the divine in all human beings, and that if we understand ourselves and are true to ourselves, then we are also true to God. “The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we—through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” -Emerson

The Transparent Eyeball could simultaneously absorb and observe information while being part of that information was a symbolic representation of these ideas.

Literary: Transcendentalists. Like their fictional counterparts, the Romantics, were trying to forge a distinctly American literature and philosophy that valued the power of the individual.

Emotion Supernatural Atmosphere Nature Individual Subjectivity Transcendentalism Gothic Romanticism

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind … he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man … that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own Emerson

The Oversoul Emerson espoused belief in a force called the Oversoul. The Oversoul was the divine spirit or mind that was present in every man and in all of nature. It was an all-pervading, omniscient, supreme mind. Each part of nature or of humanity was a reflection of the divine mind.

Our minds are connected to all other minds, all of nature and therefore all of god. There is a direct connection between this new spiritual trinity, that ironically demands and defines a unity between them.

The whole of the cosmos could be extrapolated from each particular. In each manifestation, or creation of God, man could discover, in a simpler form, all universal laws at work.

Transcendental Terms Metaphor: a stated similarity between two or more unlike things that does not use “like/as” Synecdoche: the use of a part of something to stand for the whole Imagery: word pictures Style: the unique manner authors put thoughts into words Tone: attitude of writer to own work Analogy: extended comparison of relationships

In how many churches… is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul? That the earth and heavens are passing into his mind? That he is drinking forever the soul of God?... 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. - Emerson

The most famous of American Transcendentalists are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The great American poet Walt Whitman also had transcendentalist tendencies.