EN266 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: American Literature, Transcendentalism, Fide
Document Summary
I"ve got a lot of important stuff on my mind, and i"m dying to go on at some length about it . Radical call to self-reliance, hard to pass laws about safety. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Americanized the ideas, pushing against the ideals. Jim went more traditional, to the city, antonia was the opposite. Emerson validated whitman, marketing his slogan and put wind into his sails. Whitman can be seen as fulfilling emerson"s song. Certainly he is trying, in his prose, to be this startling mind. Really resonated with the american public of this era. Man surrounded by death, read this in his essays. Hidden revolution in a lot of what he says. New england is where new literary times are happening. Emerson"s essays develop that first genuinely american intellectual movement transcendentalism.
