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Transcendentalism●Resource: the product of combination of foreign influence(German idealistic philosophy, neo-Platonism, Oriental mysticism, Confucius and Mencius) and American native Puritan tradition.●As a philosophical and literary movement,Transcendentalism flourished in New England from 1830s to the Civil War. It was the summit of American Romanticism. It marked the maturity of American romanticism and the first renaissance in the American literary history.●Major Features●●The representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson, HenryDavid Thoreau.First, the Transcendentalist placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe Secondly, Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individualThirdly, the Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbol of the spiritNature●1) To have a direct relation with nature, with God's divinecreation, simply go out and look at the stars.●2) The mind must be open to the appearances of nature inorder to achieve true wisdom.●3) The mind that is truly open to nature's own truth ispoetic. There is a difference between the poet and the farmer or a wood-cutter. The purpose or end of nature for the farmer or practical business person is that nature is a source of raw materials for human use; the purpose or end of nature for the poet is that nature is a beautiful order. The farmer sees the part; the poet sees the whole.●●●●●●In the wilderness there is something that is as beautiful ashumanity. Emerson's idea of the self in wilderness as an all-seeing spectator is very different than Thoreau's idea.For Thoreau, the self in wilderness is activThere is a relation of correspondence or analogy between human being and all natural beings: for instance, there is aspiritual relation between people and plants. Nature and spirit mirror one another.●6) What is essential is to be in harmony with nature. Ourrelation with nature is emotional and spiritual: "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit." We project our emotions into nature, and nature reflects them back to us.Nature is a mirror of the moral state of the soul●Emerson’s Stylistic Features●Epigrammatic(名言警句的)in expression of ideas●Rich in comparison, especially metaphor●Sometimes incoherent, not well organized●e.Emerson’s Influence on American Literature andCulture●His call for an independent culture played a very importantpart in the intellectual history of the nation. His “The American Scholar” has been regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence.”●He called on American writers to write about America in away peculiarly American. Emerson’s importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period●●It stresses the importance of thought over materialcircumstance●Walden emphasizes the importance of solitude,contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the "desperate" existence.●The book is not a traditional autobiography, but combinesautobiography with a social critique of contemporary Western culture's consumerist and materialist attitudes and its distance from and destruction of nature.●●That the book is not simply a criticism of society, but alsoan attempt to engage creatively with the better aspects of contemporary culture, is suggested both by Thoreau's proximity to Concord society and by his admiration for classical literature.●1.He saw nature as a genuine restorative healthy influenceon man’s spiritual well-being, and regarded it as a symbol of spirit●2.Thoreau has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man3.Thoreau was very critical of modern civilization. It was, in his opinion, degrading and enslaving man.●4.In his opinion, spiritual richness is real wealth.●5. Walden exhibits Thoreau’s calm trust in the future andhis ardent belief in a new generation of men●Show respect for nature. Follow nature’s law●Keep ecological balance●Live a simple life, but not as simple as Thoreau insists on●Seek for the physical life and spiritual life as well Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864First great American writer of fiction to work in the moralistic tradition. Combined the American romanticism with puritan moralism●The House of Seven Gables《有七个尖角阁的房子》●Young Goodman Brown《好小伙子布郎》●Mosses from an Old Manse《古屋青苔》●The Scarlet Letter《红字》Arthur Dimmesdale, the initials AD are the beginning of “Adultery●Secondly, “Dim” means lack of light,” dale” Means valley,which symbolizes the minister’s dim-interior world of his love and the shadow of sin and guilty of his mind. Arthur Dimmesdale means someone who committed adultery but dares cowardly to confess his sin or crime, and has to conceal it in the shadow and suffer it interiorly.●“Pearl” has many symbolic meaning. First, it meanstreasure--- the treasure to her mother. Second, pearl is the homonymic of purl (stream), Pearl’s fate and life is like the purl in the forest, mysterious, can only flow in the forest, seldom bathe the sunshineTone: Varies—contemplative and somewhat bitter in the introduction;thoughtful, fairly straightforward, yet occasionally tinged with irony in the body of the narrative;a. narrator: The narrator is an unnamed customhouse surveyor who writes some two hundred years after the events he describes took place. He has much in common with Hawthorne but should not be taken as a direct mouthpiece for the author’s opinions.b. point of view·The narrator is omniscient, becausehe analyzes the characters and tells the story in a way that shows that he knows more about the characters than they know about themselves. Yet, he is also a subjective narrator, because he voices his own interpretations and opinions of things. He is clearly sympathetic to Hester and Dimmesdale.c. A strong fairy-tale element and supernatural elementPuritanism stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity and limited atonement from God’s grace.。