The Light Romantics The Fireside Poets & Transcendentalists

Romanticism  Romantics valued imagination, feeling, and nature over reason, logic, and civilization.  Romantics valued poetry above all other works of the imagination.  They contrasted poetry with science, which they viewed as a destroyer of truth.  Romantics tried to reflect on the natural world in order to see truth and beauty.

The Fireside Poets  They took on causes in their poetry, such as the abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to the forefront.  They did not hesitate to address issues that were divisive and highly charged in their day, and in fact used the sentimental tone in their poems to encourage their audience to consider these issues in less abstract and more personal terms.  Through their scholarship and editorial efforts, they paved the way for later Romantic writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882)  “The Slave’s Dream”  “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”

Oliver Wendell Holmes  August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894  After graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an early age; one of his most famous works, "Old Ironsides", was published in 1830 and was influential in the eventual preservation of the USS Constitution.Old IronsidesUSS Constitution

Emily Dickinson  December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886  “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”

Walt Whitman  May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892  “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

American Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism  A literary movement in the 1830’s that established a clear “American voice”.  Emerson first expressed his philosophy in his essay “Nature”.  A belief in a higher reality than that achieved by human reasoning.  Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth through intuition.  Opposed strict ritualism of established religion.

Transcendentalism: The tenets:  Believed in living close to nature/importance of nature. Nature is the source of truth and inspiration.  Advocated self-trust/ confidence  Valued individuality/non- conformity/free thought  Advocated self-reliance/ simplicity

The first transcendentalists  Ralph Waldo Emerson  Margaret Fuller  Henry David Thoreau  Bronson Alcott

“Self-reliance” -Emerson “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation in suicide…” “Trust thyself…” “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…” “…to be great is to be misunderstood”

“Nature”  Thoreau began “essential” living  Built a cabin on land owned to Emerson in Concord, Mass. near Walden Pond  Lived alone there for two years studying nature and seeking truth within himself

“I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it has to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“Civil Disobedience”  Thoreau’s essay urging passive, non-violent resistance to governmental policies to which an individual is morally opposed.  Influenced individuals such a Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez

“[If injustice] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be the friction to stop the machine.”