美国浪漫主义.doc

美国浪漫主义 Features of American Romanticism American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize than to entertain. The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with American Romanticism. As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. Transcendentalism From the 1830s, there was much talk among some young people about the “new spiritual era”. They wanted to explore the inner life. In the center of this activity were the Transcendentalists. They formed a movement of feelings and beliefs rather than a system of philosophy. Features: spirit/oversoul importance of individualism nature – symbol of spirit/God; garment of the oversoul focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness) Appearance: 1836, “Nature” by Emerson Emerson代表作 Nature Emerson’s first published work was Nature (1836). This work has the clearest statement of Transcendentalist ideas. In it Emerson stated that man should not see nature merely as something to be used; that man’s relationship with nature transcends the idea of usefulness. Nature is a kind of discipline to man. Once you are in nature, totally in solitude, you feel you’re nothing, but you see all. Nature makes people feel transparent and humble. The American Scholar In The American Scholar, Emerson attacked the influence of the tradition and the past, and called for a new burst of American creativity. To him, the word scholar did not refer to the man of book learning, but to the original thinker. Such a man knows himself through intuition and the study of nature, not of the books. Nathaniel Hawthorne： Black vision of human nature ● Obsessed, or haunted by the Calvinistic concept of the original sin, Hawthor