Ralph Abernathy

Bob Dylan’s Lyricism: A Countercultural Perspective Abstract: Bob Dylan, a songwriter, poet and a 2017 Nobel laureate in literature is often portrayed as the guiding spirit of the sixties counterculture. Dylan’s politically committed songs in the 1960’s articulated a vision of society that was radically different from the existing political realities. The paper highlights the cultural resonance of Dylan’s radical lyricism amidst the countercultural era. It depicts the close affiliations that…

Transcendentalism proved to be one of the most known movements in the mid-nineteenth century. Authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and more joined the movement to live their lives in solitude and to express their individualism. Transcendentalism proved individualism to be key in shaping individuals’ personalities and lives. Individualism has its good days and its bad days like all human beings. Emerson once stated, “Conformity is the death of…

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4th, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His father died in 1808 of yellow fever when Hawthorne was only four years old. Hawthorne comes from a long line of Puritan ancestors, one of participated in the Salem Witch Trials as one of the three judges. To distinguish himself from his family tree , Hawthorne added a “w” to the then “Hathorne.” Hawthorne was encouraged to attend Bowdoin College in 1821. While there, he met poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future U.S Navy…

During the late 1820’s, a protest against intellectualism and spiritually began among authors, philosophers, and poets who believed that the dignity of an individual is beyond what he/she can see. Writings of transcendentalists give readers their point of view of how society is being wasted away due to religious and political beliefs. Nonconformist and influential thinker, Henry David Thoreau, emphasized on the idea of living a mindful life instead of devoted on wealth. In his essay, “Walden”,…

Do you ever go and sit out in nature to marvel at its beauty? Many poets spend much of their time in nature because it provides solitude and tranquility. Two poets, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, wrote many poems about their time spent in nature. Emerson and Thoreau were close friends who shared many ideas and wrote about similar subjects, but their approaches to their experiences differed significantly. Emerson observed nature rather than lived in it. He experienced nature in…

Transcendentalism: an idealistic philosophical and social movement, first developed in New England in the mid-1830s. This movement proposes that every individual can possess the ability to discover a higher truth on their own. Transcendentalists believe that human experience and high knowledge thinking is more effective than any human reasoning. These people strongly disagree that there is a reason behind our environment and behaviors. Unlike Puritans and their belief that salvation and goodness…

The Great Revolution; My Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was a revolution starting in the early nineteenth century. Many of it’s written elements consist of values the author's, most famous Ralph Waldo Emerson, believed should be valued. In agreeance with Henry Thoreau’s idea of venturing nature, stated in Walden fifth chapter, Solitude, with my addition of animal bonding. Another value I personally believe is financial security; victims suffering from financial issues will be able to…

Should we follow our inner voice? Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string.” This quote essentially means that if you trust yourself, you can truly be content with whatever you do. This quote connects to the Romantic period because of its focus on the conflict between individuals and society and the growth of ideas such as individualism. Many artists of the Romantic era share these ideas of individualism such as Ralph Waldo Emerson in his…

American philosopher, Waldo Emerson has stated: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me.” He further explains: “Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.” These criticisms of life are found in Emerson’s Self Reliance, and his essay Friendship, and illustrate Emerson’s belief in hyper-individualism. Hyper-Individualism is a tendency for people to act in a highly self-oriented way with little regard for society. Evidence of…

As an inspiration from Rationalism, Transcendentalism developed in the 1800s in an effort to change the minds of individuals. It was a philosophical movement that arose as a reaction to protest the general state of intellectualism and spirituality. Inheriting the goodness of people and nature and having faith that people are their best when truly self reliant. Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Although this era has come to an end, core beliefs of the…