Paper no. 108 : The American Literature M.A Sem-2

1. Presented by : Chandani Pandya
Department of English MKBU
Presentation Topic : Transcendentalism
Paper no. 108 : The American Literature
M.A Sem-2
Roll no. 06
Batch 2020-21
Email ID : pandyachandani11@gmail.com

2. Transcendentalism

3. What is Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism describes a very simple idea.
People, men and women equally, have knowledge about
themselves and the world around them that “transcends” or
goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel.
This knowledge comes through intuition and
imagination not through logic or the senses. People
can trust themselves to be their own authority on
what is right.
A Transcendentalist is a person who accepts these
ideas not as religious believes but as a way of
understanding life relationships.

4. Basic Premises of Transcendentalism
• An individual is the spiritual center of
the universe - and in an individual can
be found the clues to nature, history
and ultimately, the cosmos itself.
• It is not a rejection of the existence of
God, but a preference to explain an
individual and the world in terms of a
individual.

5. Basic Premises of Transcendentalism
• The structure of the universe literally
duplicates the structure of the
individual self - all knowledge,
therefore, begins with the self-
knowledge.
• This is similar to Aristotle's dictum
“know thyself”.

6. Basic Premises of Transcendentalism
• Transcendentalist accepted
the neo- Platonic conception
of nature as a living mystery,
full of signs - nature is
symbolic.

7. Intuition
• Since god is within us, every person
“intuition,” an essential
understanding of right and wrong
(morality).
• We don't need to learn morality
from so-called holy books, laws or
society.

8. Self-Reliance
• Our intuition and natural instincts
guide us to do the right things. In
nature, we are on corrupted.
• It is only when we let society
influence us that we start to
conform and hence, be corrupted.

9. Society is the Source of Corruption
• We are born pure, but society misguides
us and corrupts us as we grow old.
Society demands conformity, and
conformity kills individuality.
• If we are all to follow our own free will
and listened to our institution, we would
be much better off. We don't need
artificial laws, customs, fashions or
values.

10. Idealism
• Human beings are naturally good as their core. Again,
it is society that corrupts us.
• Human beings left to their own devices are good.

11. Materialism is Bad.
• Striving for material goods is
worthless and an unhealthy Pursuit.
It is totally superficial.
• Money is evil because it causes us
to place artificial and false value on
object and people.

12. Technology is Bad
• Advances in technology only cause more problems for society. For example,
we built the railroad so we could go, go, go.
• First of all, we should stay home and get in touch with ourselves.
• Secondly, now we need people to build the track and make the cars and drive
the train and maintain everything.
• Technology ends up running us and not the other way around.

13. Emphasis on the Here and Now
• The past is unimportant, knowledge comes from experience. It is not derived
from studying the past.
• We can't learn anything truly valuable from the past or from the people who
lived before us. Their knowledge was based on their experience, and ours
should be too.
• We should not worship anybody to anything that has come before us.

14. Transcendentalists
• As a group, the Transcendentalists led the celebration
of the American experiment as one of individualism
and self-reliance.
• They took progressive stands on women's rights,
abolition, reform and education.
• They criticized government, organized religion, laws,
social institutions and creeping industrialization.
• They created an American “state of mind” in which
imagination was better than reason, creativity was
better than theory, and action was better than
contemplation.
• And they had faith that all would be well because
humans could transcend limits and reach astonishing
heights.

15. References
1. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: The Literary Classics of the U.S
reprint, 1985), 86. All subsequent quotations reference to the novel are taken from
this edition, with the abbreviation (W) and the page number(s).
2. M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary Of Literary Terms 9th ed.
(Boston: Wadsworth Learning, 2009), 375-76.
3. Raghukul Tilak, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays and Poems (New Delhi:
Rama Brothers India PVT. LTD., 2009), 244.
4. Lance Newman, Our Common Dwelling: Henry Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and
the Class Politics of Nature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 84.