Part-III(4)The-Literature-of-Romanticism-美国文学.ppt

单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,Part III,The Literature of Romanticism,Transcendentalism,C,.1830s-1850s,Nature,(1836)as manifesto,The summit of American romanticism and the first renaissance in the American literary history,The term was derived from the Latin verb,transcendere,:to rise above,to pass beyond the limits,Historical Introduction(Rise of Transcendentalism),A protest against the general state of,culture and society,The product of combination of,foreign influence,and American native Puritan tradition,Romantic idealism,Philosophical romanticism,1.,Spirit,or,Oversoul,2.,Individualism,the most important element in society,the divinity of individual,ideal type of man:self-reliant individual,3.,Nature,as,symbol,of the Spirit or God,link between God and man,6.Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882),philosopher,poet and essayist,prose,poetry,speech,spokesman of New England Transcendentalism,Life(Calvinism,Unitarianism,trip to Europe and back with European Romanticism),Believe in,a higher individualism;the spiritual nature of reality;the importance of self-reliance;the obedience to instinct;independence of mind;the obligation of optimism and hope;the existence of a unifying Oversoul,seemingly unqualified acceptance of life and cheerful optimism,In the intellectual history,he embodies a new nations desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.,During his lifetime he was considered one of the two or three best writers in America,and certainly the most influential among his contemporaries.,His reputation has fallen somewhat in the present century.,Essays,:,“The American Scholar”,1837,“The Over-Soul”1841,“Self-Reliance”,1841,“The Transcendentalist”1842,“The Poet”,(1841-1843),“We will walk on our own feet;we will work with our own hands;Divine Soul which also inspires all men.”,“The American Scholar”,“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes.It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect,What is truth?and of the affections,What is good?by yielding itself passive to the educated Will.Build,therefore,your own world.As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind,that will unfold its great proportions.A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”,“The American Scholar”,7.Henry David Thoreau,(1817-1862),essayist and poet,truest disciple of Emerson,Leader of American Transcendentalism,Life (1845-1847),His statue was placed in the hall of Fame in New York in 1969.,He was very critical of modern civilization:“Civilized man is the slave of matter.”,“Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable,but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”,Thoreau,Major Works,“Resistance to Civil Government”,(or“Civil Disobedience”),1849,A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,1849,Walden,or Life in the Woods,1854,Slavery in Massachusetts 1854,A Plea for Captain John Brown 1859,“Life Without Principle”1863,The Maine Woods 1864,Cape Cod 1865,Walden,or Life in the Woods,(1854),The book compresses that time into a single calendar year,using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development.,It is about his experience in a cabin on Walden Pond for two years and two months.,“Simplicity,simplicity,simplicity!”,It concludes on a clear note of optimism and hope.,Thoreau not only embraced Emersons Transcendentalist philosophy,but went further to illustrate the pantheistical quality of nature.,He holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection.,“Civil Disobedience”(1849),advocates passive resistance to unjust laws of society and influenced people such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King,Jr.,“Dont mistake the march of commerce for progress and civilization especially when that commerce amounts to driving slaves to produce the articles of vice like alcohol and tobacco.Theres no shortage of gold,of tobacco,of alcohol,but there is a short supply of a high and earnest purpose.”,18th-century rationalism;the skeptical philosophy of Locke(sensationalism,or empiricism);and the confining religious orthodoxy of New England Calvinism;Unitarianism,Spirit first,matter second;,Spirit is everywhere.,Belief in the power of intuition:man can transcend the limits of the senses and of logic and directly receive higher truths and greater knowledge denied to more mundane methods of knowing,Religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal“oversoul”;,An ethical guide and a clarion call to action,Inspired English poets and German idealist philosophers,New Thought Movement,Great impact on American writers,Inspired one of Americas most prolific literary periods in its history,Never a systematic philosophy,Rampant individualism rather than a democracy of mutual helpfulness,Denial of the reality of evil,Denial of its real spiritual origin,