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Emerson
Hawthorne
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous
100
Discuss this passage by Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
This line comes from "Self-Reliance." Emerson goes on to argue that a "great soul" has little to do with consistency and that our shadow on the wall is as insignificant as consistency should be in our lives. We need to open up our mouths and speak. We should say what we believe today and be as willing tomorrow to say something entirely different--with the same conviction (as long as that is what we believe). Emerson says "to be great is to be misunderstood." (all of this comes from the bottom of 537 to the top of page 538).
100
Why might Hawthorne have changed the spelling of his last name (originally Hathorne)?
There is speculation that he was trying to distance himself from his great-great-grandfather (John Hathorne), a judge during the Salem witch trials. Of his forebear, Hawthorne wrote (in the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter) that he was “so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.”
100
What is rationalism?
The belief in reasoning over religious faith or intuition
100
Many of his works deal with the sins of his forefathers, judgmental Puritans, and the mental anguish suffered by those who would not conform.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
100
The Romantic period spans the years 1828 to 1865 (the year the Civil War ended). The unity of this nation was severely tests during this period. What is dividing the nation and how do we see this in the literature?
What is the issue of slavery (which also has implications in the westward expansion--because determining whether those western areas would include slavery was an issue). Many of the writers in this period wrote about slavery, including Emerson..
200
In "Self-Reliance," Emerson talks about the "rose under my window." What is his point about this rose?
This is really getting to his notion that society is too focused on the past. (Remember--he say, in the opening lines of "Nature" that "our age is retrospective.") Emerson is suggesting that we are "mendicant and sycophantic." We are too interested in the past. The roses under his window don't care about the past. They make "no reference to former roses or to better ones." They simply are themselves and live in this moment. This doesn't mean not to remember the past. What it means is not to live in the past.
200
What did the Romantics believe they could find through their imagination (often in relation to nature)?
The truth.
200
He was the first American to enjoy international acclaim with his stories inspired by German folktales set in upstate New York, including "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
Washington Irving
200
Who wrote "Thantatopsis" and what is it about?
Who is William Cullen Bryant. Thanatopsis literally means a "meditation on death." One thing the poem suggests is that death is a great equalizer: Yet not to thy eternal resting place Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one might sepulchre.
200
Partly inspired by the Industrial Revolution, this movement challenged how people viewed the established authorities of government, religion, and education and championed the value of the individual
Transcendentalism
300
In "Nature," Emerson says the following: 3. “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,--no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” What does he mean by this?
This passage is essential in understanding Emerson's notion of Transcendentalism. Emerson is suggesting that when he is alone in the woods, he feels connected to the Universal Being. He connects this Universal Being with God--and many readers identify this as transcendtalism. Every object in nature (including human beings) gets to participate in this life force. Through this life force, all objects in nature are linked. The paradox in this is the "I am nothing. I see all." Finding oneself by losing oneself is essential to Emerson's transcendental thinking. We have to read much of Emerson symbolically to get at the idea of his message.
300
Identify a possible theme in Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark."
One possible theme is the limits of science--and the dangers of over-reaching one's bounds.
300
What major event was taking place at the start of the Romantic Period in American Literature?
The Industrial Revolution.
300
"Rip Van Winkle"
What is a short story by Washington Irving. This is the story of the title character--a lazy, do-nothing--who falls asleep for 20 years and reenters the world after the Revolutionary War. Rip is really the Benjamin Franklin anti-hero. His is neither a self-made man (as Franklin presents himself) or self-reliant (as Emerson argues Americans need to be).
300
Literary movement that contrasted sharply with transcendentalism; its writers did not hold that all people were inherently good, and they viewed nature in a much darker way.
Dark Romanticism (influenced by Gothic literature)
400
"Nature" is broken up into many sections. One of the sections is about language. Briefly describe Emerson's view of language.
For Emerson, language is metaphorical; it is highly symbolic. (Linguists would disagree with much of what Emerson says, but I don't think that would matter to Emerson.) Emerson says that "words are signs of natural facts." Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts, and Nature is the symbol of spirit" (500). What he means by this is that language (like paper money) is only valuable when iit is back up by something tangible. so, says Emerson, "Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind."
400
"Moonlight in a familiar room" --explain
This is from the "Custom House"--in which Hawthorne explains defines the difference between a Romance and a novel. Most simply put, the Romance can enter the world of imagination, but the novel is based on reality.
400
What is Romanticism?
This literary movement was a reaction against rationalism. The period began with Irving's "Sketch Book" and ended with Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." In this period, a new emphasis was placed upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, the supernatural and remote past was fostered, and an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters was paid, and above all, the individual and the common man was exalted. Among the aspects of the "romantic" movement may be listed as a) sensibility; b) primitivism; c) love of nature; d) sympathetic interest in the past, especially the medieval; e) mysticism; and f) individualism. Often considered the first period of American creativity, the Romantic period is placed within the historical context of westward expansion, the increasingly heated nature of the slavery question, and strained relations between the opposing desires for reform and separation found in the North and the South. Historically, this period of tensions resulted in the Civil War. Within the literature, however, the opposing views of life were able to co-exist relatively peacefully. Romanticism is typically defined as a "literary and philosophical theory that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular attitudes and valuing its fidelity in portraying experiences, however fragmentary and incomplete, more than its adherence to completeness, unity, or the demands of the genre. Although romanticism tends at times to regard nature as alien, it more often sees in nature a revelation of Truth . . . and a more suitable subject for art than those aspects of the world sullied by artifice. Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual" (A Handbook to Literature). Simply stated, Romanticism is a movement wherein artists reacted to the constraints of Realism (think along the lines of Benjamin Franklin's painstakingly realistic autobiography) and moved toward the individual as a creative being. Oftentimes, the language of this period is less formalized than previous periods, nature is a reflection of man, and simplicity is prized over the conventions of the past. A movement within this movement is Transcendentalism which emphasized the importance of nature and the "dignity of manual labor," and the most influential Transcendentalist was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Literature expanded to include novels, essays, and lectures. Romanticism was a literary revolution. Source: https://www.ncsu.edu
400
Define Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism was an idealistic philosophical and literary movement that arose in New England. Transcendentalist maintained that each person is innately divine, with the intuitive ability to discover higher truth. They rejected dogmatic religious doctrines, praised self-reliance, and gloried the natural goodness of the individual. General beliefs: - each human being is innately divine - that God’s essence lies within all individuals - that there are transcendental categories of knowledge (that is categories that govern our experience and understanding, such as time and causality)—and they added more (like moral truth) (They did this by contending that individuals have the ability to discover higher truths intuitively or mystically, without recourse to the senses or logic.) Transcendentalists suggested that reliance on sensory experience and rational thought may actually impede the acquisition of transcendent truths. People can discover their moral truths in nature with the guidance of their own conscience rather than dogmatic religious doctrine.
400
Who was the first American writer to support himself solely through his writing, and he was the first writer of the nineteenth century to achieve an international reputation.
Washington Irving.
500
Explain what Emerson means (generally) by self-reliance.
Mostly, this idea is summed up in the following passage: "there is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his potion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till." He means (and says so in a variety of ways throughout the essay) that it is essential to think for oneself, to come in conflict with the masses (with society), to be willing to change one's mind and speak boldly about having done so. To be self-reliant is to avoid being timid or apologetic. To be self-reliant means not looking to the past and past thinkers for answers. He says "insist on yourself; never imitate." Because if we imitate, where will our next great thinkers come from? "where is the master who could have taught shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton. Every great man is an unique." Remember--for Emerson--to rely too heavily on society and civilization means the loss of ingenuity: "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet."
500
16. “The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,--or, rather as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,--thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may ad an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.”
This is from the "preface" to the House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne is clarifying the difference between his work and that of the popular writers of the period. It gets at the notion of ambiguity in his writing.
500
Who was the founder of American Transcendentalism, a former minister who had a crisis of faith after his first wife died of tuberculosis
Ralph Waldo Emerson
500
Literature from this period or movement explores inner fears and psychological torment, often blurring the lines between what appears to be with what is real.
Dark Romanticism (Hawthorne and Poe are major figures in this movement)
500
What literary genre is emerging fully in this period?
What is the novel? We didn't read any of his works, but James Fenimore Cooper is an important novelist of the period. Certainly by the time Hawthorne is publishing The Scarlet Letter, the novel was firmly established as an American genre.