Transcendentalism, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman

Literature and NatureUniversity of Helsinki/Comparative Literature11.11.2014M.A. Pekka Raittinen

Transcend:

transitive verb1 a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects ofc: to be prior to, beyond, and above (the universe or material existence) 2: to outstrip or outdo in some attribute, quality,

or power intransitive verb: to rise above or extend notably

beyond ordinary limits

Transcendentalism

In New England from (about) 1830’s to 1850’s

Philosophical, literary, social and religious movement?

Time of ”The Great Transformation” in American history => The Depression of 1830’s, immigration, abolitionism …

Concord, Massachusetts

The Roots of Transcendentalism

Unitarian Church Immanuel Kant: Critique

of Pure Reason => Metaphysical truths unobtainable by reason

German and English Romanticism; Thomas Carlyle

Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg

Eastern philosophies and religions – Hinduism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

Essayist, lecturer, poet…

First studied to be a priest in the Unitarian Church, like his father

”The American Scholar” (1837) => ”Intellectual Declaration of Independence”

Emerson and Nature

”Nature” (1836); other essays ”Self-Reliance”, ”The Over-Soul”, ”The Poet”

"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.“

In nature man is closest to God => “Transparent eyeball”

Transcendentalism as a social movement

- George Ripley’s Brook Farm and Fruitlands –

Utopian-Socialist communitarism

- Bronson Alcott – experimental pedagogy

- Orestes Brownson ”The Laboring Classes” (1840)

- Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850) – women’s rights

advocate - Numerous other social

and reform movements; abolitionism, temperance

movement, vegetarism, co-operative societies

etc.

Life of Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

Born in Concord, worked as a school teacher ”handy-man” and finally as a surveyor

Moved to his Walden Pond cabin on 4th of July 1845

First book A Week on Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

Walden or Life in the Woods (1854)

Two years in the woods=> but written and re-written over a long period

Year’s cycle in nature => Ends in ”Spring”

Genre? Autobiography? Travel book? Bildungsroman? Pastoral? Epic?

Individualism => The book’s ”I” (”Eye”)

Thoreau, economy, individual and ecology

Walden’s first chapter ”Economy”

So-called four essentials: ”Food, Clothing, Shelter and Food”

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Ecological life?

Other works

”Walking” (1861)Political thought:

”Resistance to Civil Goverment” or ”Civil Disobedience”; ”A Plea For Captain John Brown”; ”Life Without Principle”

”The travel books”: Cape Cod; The Maine Woods

Later interest in natural science; essay ”Wild Apples” among others

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Continued the Transcendentalist’s ideals in his poetry

Leaves of Grass (1855 – 1881)

Long poem”Song of Myself” => free verse

”Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”; ”Calamus” poems

Legacy and influence

Quentin Anderson: The Imperial Self (1971)

Walt Whitman => Beat Literature=> 60’s counterculture

Thoreau’s and Emerson’s influence on the environmental movement => John Muir

”Civil Disobedience” => Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King

In [American] popular culture, television, movies =>

Terrence Mallick: The Thin Red Line(1998) and The New World (2005)