4.1. American Transcendentalism

  • Philosophical movement ca. 1830-1860) → Same time as romanticism

  • Based in New England, especially Concord, MA/Cambridge MA/ Harvard University

  • center: The Hedge club / Transcendental Club → 1836-1844 meetings

  • heterogeneous group

  • Significance → reform movements in American literature

Name/term : label with two factors

  • connection with idealist philosophies e.g. Kant

  • “transcend”/”transgress” → Non-conformity, new alternative way

Major representatives

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 e.g. “Nature” 1836

  • Amos Bronson Alcott 1799-1888

  • George Ripley 1802-1880 (The Dial)

  • Orestes A. Brownson 1803-1876

  • Elizabeth Peabody 1804-1894

  • Theodore Parker 1810-1860

  • Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888

  • ….

Major platform: The Dial 1840-1844

  • short lived magazine

  • reform thoughts on women, Native Americans, …

  • “Outbreak of romanticism on Puritan soil” Perry Miller

  • influenced and characterised by

    • diversity

    • hybridity

    • multivocality

  • forms of writing also often hybrid forms

Major positions and concerns

  • dissent (from mainstream)

    • literature: disagree with firesight poets, reject imitation

    • social and political ideologies: anti-materialist, simplicity

  • imagination (over understanding)

  • language as medium and open to different readings

  • self/individualism: self-determined, -reliant, -confident

  • the poet as special individual

  • nature: key image, divine revelation, good, introspection, simplicity, truth

  • reformatory impulse: utopian, individual as source for perfect society

  • Core text:

    • Thoureau, “Walden” → influenced later movements

Reformatory impulses led to launching of communitarian, utopian experiments (living/writing together in communities) → Two major experiments:

  • Brook Farm near Roxbury MA 1841-47→ George Ripley→ Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance 1852

  • Fruitlands in Harvard MA 1844-45 → Bronson Alcott & Charles Lane

    • vegetarian living and tradition of agrarianism → counter model to industrialization

      → Louisa May Alcott “Transcendental Wild Oats” 1876

    → Major impact on 1960s