美国文学论文-瓦尔登湖

Transcendentalism and the Walden

2011级英语三班万龙201103010318 2014/6/16

Abstract

As the precursor of American Transcendentalism, Thoreau spared no effort to take his provoking thoughts into practice, which presented vividly in his noted book Walden. The transcendentalists think the university could be divided into two essential parts, soul and nature. In the first place, they place emphasis on spirit, or the oversoul, as the most important thing in universe; secondly, the transcendentalists stress the importance of individual; thirdly, they offer a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit of God. Thus, Thoreau had special ways of understanding solitude and he never felt lonely because all the materials in the world are alive and can have communications.

Key words

Transcendentalism, Walden, Thoreau, oversoul, individual, solitude

1 Brief introduction for transcendentalism and its influence

New England transcendentalism is an American political, spiritual, philosophical, and literary movement of the early 19th century. Although it’s limited in time from the mid 1830s to the late 1840s in space to eastern Massachusetts, its influences continue to spread through American culture. Its beginning is marked by the publication of Emerson’s Nature which utters a new voice “The universe is composed of nature and the soul”. Transcendentalism begins as a radical religious movement, opposing to the conservative rationalism of Unitarianism. It queries the already established cultural forms, tries to reintegrate spirit and matter and help to push American Romanticism into a new phase.

The transcendentalists think the university could be divided into two essential parts, soul and nature. A belief in the human conscience is a fundamental transcendentalist principle, which is based upon the creed of the indwelling of God in the soul of the individual. “We see God around us, because he dwells within us,”wrote William Ellery Channing. The transcendentalists believe in the importance of a direct relationship with God and with nature. Emerson wrote in his essay Nature that “The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we—through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?”Inspired by transcendentalism, Thoreau went to live at Walden Pond in 1845 to experience nature directly and intensely and to test his transcendental outlook in the concrete physical world. In the chapter of his book Walden titled “Solitude,” he wrote of his connection with nature as a very intimate, two-way relationship.

Thoreau was just one of the excellent transcendentalists. In the last chapter of Walden, he told us again that one attraction in coming to the woods to live was that he should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring coming in. The arrival of spring symbolized a reawakening of the self. He also said he wanted to “live sincerely”, and “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn