Literatura Norteamericana I

American Literature I
Ricardo Menéndez
10 ECTS Credits 2019-2020
Authors & Contents 1st Term
Study Block I
 Early American Literature
 Captain John Smith – Oct 9th
 William Bradford – Oct 16th
 Anne Bradstreet – Oct 23rd
 Mary Rowlandson – Oct 30th
 The American Enlightment
 Jonathan Edwards – Nov 6th
 Benjamin Franklin – Nov 13th
 Olaudah Equiano – Nov 20th
 Phillis Wheatley – Nov 27th
Ricardo Menéndez
 Romanticism (part I)
 Washington Irving – Dec 4th
 James Fenimore Cooper – Dec 11th
 Ralph Waldo Emerson – Dec 18th
 Henry David Thoroeau – Jan 8th
 REVIEW
 Day 1 – Jan 15th
 Day 2 – Jan 22nd
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“ Do not go where the path may
lead, go instead where there is
no path and leave a trail
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
 Biography
 Works by author
 Online resources
 Q&A
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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Objectives of the Unit

 Learn about theoretical principles and practical aspects of
Transcendentalism
 Observe how Emerson, the most prominent leader of
Transcendentalism, encouraged Americans to “transcend” the limits
imposed by tradition, and construct a completely new cultural identity
based upon direct contact with nature
 Approach Emerson not only as a social reformer, but also as one of the
great artists of the mid-nineteenth century American Renaissance
 Analyze Nature, the founding document or manifesto for the group of
intellectuals who came to be known as the Transcendental Club, and
“Hamatreya”, a poem with Hindu inspiration, that expressed the
Transcendentalists’ view of nature

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography (I)
 Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American poet, essayist, and philosopher
born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts
 Son, grandson and great-grandson of ministers even though it was his
mother and paternal aunt who transferred her religiousness
 Widely celebrated as an important figure in the emergence of
America’s national culture, he is probably the most influential of all
the American writers of the nineteenth century
 Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman felt indebted to him and expressed
their gratitude towards Emerson, whom both considered their master, in
their works
 In 1821, he took over as director of his brother’s school for girls, though
in his own words he was a “hopeless schoolmaster”

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography (II)
 He abandoned school in 1825 and joined the Unitarian church
(opposed to the Trinity and certain Calvinist tenets)
 He married Ellen Tucker in 1829, who died only fifteen months
later from tuberculosis at the age of nineteen leaving Emerson
in a deep psychological, intellectual and spiritual crisis.
 He ultimately reached the conclusion that individual religious
experience is more important than the dogma and ritual of
religious institutions
 He had an epiphany while in France in 1833 that would deeply
influence him
 He began advocating for slavery abolition in the 1850s
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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (I)

 His rise to fame made him become an imposing figure for
most, though he always seemed eager to mark the path for
everyone to follow. He was aware of the contradictions of
his works
 He proposed the subversion of traditional forms. His ideas
have received both praise and rejection
 Current attention is paid to his literary style with which he
expressed his convictions
 He always considered himself a poet. As a result of his
experimentalism in poetry his poetic works display a
considerable range of techniques and poem styles.

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (II)

 1832 He became a Transcendentalist, leading to the later essays
"Self-Reliance" and "The American Scholar."
 1836 Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and
social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing
the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay, Nature
 1837 He delivered the lecture “The American Scholar”, which
encouraged young Americans to free themselves from dependency
on old European models
 1838 He delivered the very controversial “Divinity School
Address” to Harvard Divinity School Graduates questioning
established religious institutions. He received accusations of
heresy and blasphemy

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Example of Poetry: The Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,

To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Renaissance
 American Renaissance, also called New England Renaissance
 It was the period in the history of American architecture and the arts, from the
1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American
literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression
of a national spirit.
 It was characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a feeling that the
United States was the heir to Greek democracy, Roman law, and Renaissance
humanism
 The American preoccupation with national identity (or New Nationalism) in this
period was expressed by modernism and technology as well as academic classicism
 Americans felt that their civilization was uniquely the modern heir, a feeling
deepened by new technologies
 Transcendentalism is part of the American Renaissance

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalism
 One of the most important influences in the period was that of the
Transcendentalists, centered in the village of Concord, Massachusetts where
Emerson lived
 This movement included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson
Alcott, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller.
 The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture
based on native elements.
 They advocated reforms in church, state, and society, contributing to the rise
of free religion and the abolition movement and to the formation of various
utopian communities, such as Brook Farm.
 Transcendentalism is opposed to Empiricism
 Emerson credited Immanuel Kant for the word Transcendental
 Emerson’s 95-page Nature is the manifesto for the Transcendental Club

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature
 Foundational essay of Transcendentalism
 Defends a non-traditional appreciation of nature
 Reality can be understood by studying nature
 Emerson's visit to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris inspired
the lectures that were later published as essays
 Four usages for nature (the ways by which humans use it) : Commodity,
Beauty, Language and Discipline
 In "Nature", Emerson lays out and attempts to solve an abstract problem:
humans do not fully accept nature’s beauty
 In order to experience the “wholeness” with nature for which we are
naturally suited, we must be separate from the flaws and distractions
imposed on us by society
 Spirituality is a major theme in the essay. Emerson believed in reimagining
the divine as something large and visible, which he referred to as nature

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hamatreya (1845)
 A poem with a poem within it
 The embedded poem is called The Earth Song
 Based on a passage of the Vishnu Purana
 The title of the poem seems to be an adaptation of “Maitreya”
 Metrically varied and unconventional
 First section of the poem is primarily blank verse (mostly unrhymed iambic
pentameters)
 The section of the Earth Song metrically irregular, shorter in length to the
first section
 The final four lines are an adapted iambic heptameter
 The first section and the final four lines have the same narrative voice

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Unit 11 – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Online Resources for Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Ralph Waldo Emerson Wikipedia entry | Cambridge Companion Entries
 Ralph Waldo Emerson on LION (Proquest Literature Online)
 Resources and Links suggested in the Curso Vitual
 Audiobook of Nature: https://librivox.org/nature-version-2-by-ralph-waldo-emerson/
 Online text of Nature: https://archive.org/details/naturemunroe00emerrich
 Online text of Hamatreya: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-
poets/poems/detail/52341
 Online text of “Self-Reliance”
 Online text of “The American Scholar”
 Encyclopedia Britannica entry:
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson
http://www.britannica.com/event/Transcendentalism-American-movement
Ricardo Menéndez UNED 2019-2020 ricmenendez@madrid.uned.es
 Remember to complete
Self-Evaluation &
Exploratory Questions
from the Book
Online Self Evaluation Quiz

Questions?
Thank you