4. Self-awareness as Theme
Self and nature were one
Self-awareness is a mode of
knowledge opening up the
universe
Self-realization
Self-expression
Self-reliance
7. Transcendentalism
Movement
a reaction against 18th-century
rationalism
a manifestation of the general
humanitarian trend of 19th-
century thought
based on a fundamental belief
in the unity of the world and
God
9. Concord
- first island settlement of the original
Massachusetts Bay Colony
- site of the first battle of the America
Revolution
Concord Hymn
- Ralph Waldo’s poem
commemorating the battle
Transcendentalism Movement
10. By the rude bridge that arched
the flood
Their flag to April’s breeze
unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers
stood
And fired the shot heard round
the world.
Concord Hymn
11. Published a magazine “The Dial”
edited by Margaret Fuller and
Emerson
Transcendentalism Movement
12. Abolitionist
Insisted on individual differences
(unique viewpoint of individual)
American writers often saw
themselves as lonely explorers
outside society and convention.
Transcendentalists
13.
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Had a religious sense of mission
For him, “To be a good minister,
it was necessary to leave a
church
His writings have spiritual and
practical, aphoristic expression
Wrote Self-Reliance, Nature
and Brahma
15. Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Brahma”
If the red slayer think he slay
Or the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Brahma”
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings
The strong gods pine for my
abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven,
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on
heaven.
17. Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self-Reliance”
“Ne te quaesiveris extra.”
“Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Honest
Man’s Fortune
Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf’s teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.
18. Henry David Thoreau
The subject of his many
writings is according to his
rigorous principles
Wrote Walden
- anti-travel book
- challenges the reader to
examine his or her life and
live it authentically
20. Wrote poems such as crossing
Brooklyn Ferry, Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking, and when Lilacs
Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Wrote essays such as Democratic
Vistas and Gilded Age
Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)
21. Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)
Largely self-thought and
innovative
Project himself into
everything that he sees and
imagines
Wrote Leaves of Grass (Song
of Myself)
- vast, energetic and natural
22. Walt Whitman “Leaves of Grass”
Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are
one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants
resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous
waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I
here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
23.
24. The Brahmin Poets
writings of the Brahmin poets fused
American and European traditions
and sought to create a continuity of
shared Atlantic experience
Retarded the growth of a distinctive
American consciousness
25. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882)
Best-known American poet of
his day
responsible for the misty, a
historical, legendary sense of
the past that merged
American and European
traditions
Wrote Evangeline, The Song of
Hiawatha and The Courtship of
Miles Standish
26. James Russell Lowell
(1819-1891)
Respected critic and educator
Editor of Atlantic
Wrote A Fable for critic
Liberal reformer, abolitionist and
supporter of women’s suffrage and
laws ending child labor
Wrote Biglow Papers, Big Series
27. Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809-1894)
His work is marked by refreshing
versatility
Encompasses humorous essays
Wrote The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table, Elsie Venner (novel), Ralph
Waldo Emerson (biography), The
Deacon’s Masterpiece (verse), The
Chambered Nautilus (philosophical),
and Old Ironsides (patriotic)
28. John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-1892)
Ardent abolitionist
Respected for anti-slavery poems
such as Ichabod
His writings have sharp images, simple
constructions and ballad-like
tetrameter couplets
His best work was Snow Bound
29. Margaret Fuller
(1810-1850)
Outstanding essayist, a activist and a
social reformer
Wrote “Woman in the Nineteenth
Century”
- earliest and most American
exploration of women’s role in the
society
Stresses the importance of self-
dependence
30.
31. Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Loved nature and found deep
inspiration in the birds, animals
and plants
Most solitary literary figure of
her time
Have imagistic style in writings
Combines concrete things with
abstract ideas
32. Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Explores the dark and hidden part
Her poetry exhibits great intelligence
and agonizing paradox
Her poems usually known by the
numbers assigned to them
Has 1775 poems
33. Emily Dickinson’s 288
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise — you
know!
How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell one’s name — the livelong
June —
To an admiring Bog!
34.
35. Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Wrote Scarlet Letter (classic
portrayal of Puritan America)
Hawthorne’s gentle style,
remote historical setting, and
ambiguity softened his grim
themes and contented the
general public
36. Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Wrote The House of the Sven Gables,
The Blithedale Romance, (criticized
the society), Marble Faun
Wrote short stories such as The
Minister’s Black Veil, Young Goodman
Brown, and My Kinsman, Major
Malineux
37. Herman Melville
(1819-1891)
His interest in sailors’ lives
grew naturally out of his own
experiences (theme of his
novels)
Wrote Typee, Moby-Dick
(Self-Referential, a natural
epic)
38. Themes of death-in-life, especially
being buried alive or returning like a
vampire from the grave, appear in
many of his works
Examples are The Premature Burial,
Ligeia, The Cask of Amontillado, and
The Fall of the House of Usher
His best-known poem is The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1949)
40. Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1949)
Many of his stories prefigure
the genres of science fiction,
horror, and fantasy so
popular today.
Poe believed that
strangeness was an essential
ingredient of beauty, and his
writing is often exotic.
