美国超验主义文学.docVIP

New England Transcendentalism 学院：外国语学院 班级：英日092 姓名：常司楠 学号：090801045 New England Transcendentalism In 1836 a little book entitled Nature came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual l life of America. “The universe is composed of Nature and the Soul,” it says, “Sprit is present everywhere.” The wind of change was beginning blow. A whole new way of thinking began to exert its influence on the consciousness of man. Nature’s voice pushed American romanticism into a new phase—new England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism. It was the first American intellectual movement which exerted a tremendous influence on the consciousness of American people. As to what is the Transcendentalism, the answer is the idealism. However, in that time, some New Englanders not happy about the materialistic-orientated of their time, formed themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss the matters of interest to the life of the nation as a whole. They express their view on the journal, Dial. The club with a membership of some thirty men and a couple of women included Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. There are 5 features of the New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows: first, the Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the universe. The over soul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part. It existed in nature and man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. Now this, obviously, represented a new way of looking at the world. It was also apparently a reaction to the eighteen-century Newtonian concept of the universe: In the eighteen century it was apparently held that the world was made up of matter. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking, against the poplar tendency to