Ralph Waldo Emerson

Come Away to the Water “When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.” These words by Ralph Waldo Emerson behold transcendentalist value in the perception of nature. He describes nature as a female being, and gives her the ability to “create geniuses.” The transcendental movement emerged in the Antebellum period of America with the philosophical reform movements of the 1830s. Transcendentalists placed value on the serenity and spirituality of nature, the vitality of…

Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was born in the early nineteenth century. In 1845, he made the decision to go into the woods by Walden Pond and build a small cabin for himself to live simply in for two years, two months, and two days. His time in the woods was intended to help him find himself and his purpose in life. Thoreau, “... wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die,…

dominant and the powerful religious movement in Boston. It started to develop in the aftermath of Unitarianism taking hold at Harvard University. Many great people were involved in this fantastic movement to awake the people of their country; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and some others. Thus, the transcendentalists were the…

people of influence taking up sides as they saw fit. Supporters of Manifest Destiny include but are not limited to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk the Democratic party fur trapper Zenas Leonard, Richard Henry Dana Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert J. Walker. Those who opposed Manifest Destiny are as follows, Native Americans, Residents of Latin America and the Caribbean, Great Britain, the Whig party and individuals throughout the…

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every human being, of whatever origin, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.” This makes people wonder, could society function without respect? We all respect different people for different reasons. Maybe you respect your parents for how hard they work, or you might respect a friend for their accomplishments. Sometimes you could show somebody respect by just shaking their hand, or doing something as simple as saying thank…

Uprooting the Truth “The universe is composed of Nature and the soul,” said renowned Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson in his piece title Nature (qtd. in Perkins 591). The vitality of nature’s power is one of the fundamental pillars of Transcendentalism. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter mirrors this concept, nature playing a vital role in the novel from beginning to end. The influence of nature is a common theme throughout the novel. Specifically, the forest, flowers, and sunlight…

SER for American Writers: Romantics, Transcendentalists, and Dark Romantics and Slaves Now well into the nineteenth century, truly American literature was beginning to take its hold on society. Just as America changed drastically since its initial formation, literature within America also adapted wildly from its debut. The writing in America began to leave the constant tradition of nonfiction journal entries, and it adapted into the fiction stories and tales that are more familiar in today’s…

In “Self-reliance” Emerson makes a bold claim on the concept of time and man’s conceptual idea of perfection. He states: “Man cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present” (151). Emerson would seem to argue that man cannot exists in the present moment unlike nature. Which is another way of saying that man simply cannot be or just exist. In order to be man must leave his thoughts of time behind and simply exists in all facets of life. This brings up two important…

century movement known as Transcendentalism in their works, The Fall of the House of Usher and Young Goodman Brown, respectively. Transcendentalism was a reaction to the focus on logic in the Enlightenment period of literature and centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson writings, which would be known as part of the Romanticism period. The movement was embodied by the optimistic belief that people and nature are good and with a focus on imagination and individuality. However, not all writers of the…

children, his family helped him attend Harvard where he would struggle to distinguish himself. Years later after his brother passed away, Thoreau would change his life by befriending a man by the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson would quickly begin to influence Thoreau to transcendentalism. Emerson exposed him to the idea over spiritual matters over the physical world. Acting as his friend and mentor he helped Thoreau write one of his first transcendentalist writings, Nature. Thoreau would…