English 380

American Renaissance

Course Packet

Dr. Steven Frye

Professor of English

California State University, Bakersfield

American Transcendentalism

Bedford Entries

TranscendentalismThe Romantic Period in American Literature

Major Intellectual and Artistic Influences

Platonism Eastern Mysticism (The Upanishads and The Bhagavad-Gita)

Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and Unitarianism (Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith)

German Idealism (Kant, Schelling, Hegel)

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

English Romanticism (Wordsworth and Coleridge)

Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798)

Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817)

Major Tenets

The exaltation of humanity—all humanity

All power and wisdom comes from NatureBooks occupy a secondary place in the scale of intellectual values

Instinct is good and must be obeyed rather than curbed by convention and authority

Imagination (Kantian Reason) is superior to the “rational” faculties of mind

The Transcendental Club (1836-1840)

The Dial (1840-1844)

Important Terms

Imagination

Oversoul

Pantheism

Apotheosis

The Sublime

Major Authors and Figures

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Among many others

Ralph Waldo EmersonNature (1836)

Emerson’s “little book,” is generally regarded as the manifesto of the American Transcendentalist movement. In circular fashion, the essay grapples with notions of mind (“soul,” “spirit,” “idea”) and body (nature and the material world). Traditional Western philosophy sees the body and mind as separate and distinct entities, what in philosophy is called “dualism.” In doing so, this tradition argues for the superiority of the mind (in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the soul) over the physical body. The mind or soul is permanent and transcendent. The body is impermanent and immanent.

Emerson retains the notion of idealism and dualism that we associate with the Western philosophical tradition from Plato forward. In other words, he asserts that a transcendental and permanent realm of being exists. Reality is more than what we perceive. All that we perceive is in fact only an intimation of a pure and more “real” realm of “ideas”-- hence the term “idealism.”

What is the relationship of ideas to physical things in Western idealism? How do they relate? Before you build a table, you begin with the idea of a table. The idea is perfect, pure, and ideal. Once you build the table, it corresponds only indirectly to the original idea. It is flawed, blemished, different in subtle ways from the original conception, altered by the very medium used to express it. In terms of literature, that medium is language.

This is where Emerson differs from the tradition that proceeds him. For Emerson, nature and spirit, body and mind, are inextricably linked and related. He attempts a philosophical “monism.” Nature is the perfect and ultimate physical expression of the Universal Spirit. It only remains for us to learn to apprehend the transcendent truths in the physical world--to read the book of nature.

Nature (1836) develops these notions by returning to the same basic idea continually, by circling and rising above it. Emerson begins by asserting the basic tenets of American Transcendentalism. In the Introduction and Chapter I. Nature, he argues that we should learn from our own experience with nature rather than from received tradition. We should develop “an original relation to the universe” (1106). We should learn to see nature as extraordinary, brilliant, as an embodiment of divinity. We must also understand that we are a part of nature, and as such we are potentially god-like. Emerson writes:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel nothing can befall me in life,--no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,). . . Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (1109)

But quite early in the essay, he introduces a traditional notion of Idealism (with its dualist separation of the physical and the transcendental) in his conception of the relationship of mind

and body, the physical and the transcendental/ideal/real/spiritual. His conception initially contradicts the newer (monist) conception of mind/body unification that is at the heart of American Transcendentalism. In the Introduction, he writes:

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. (1107)

In subsequent chapters II through V, we see a circular structure. Emerson attempts to work through this philosophical problem, to resolve and reconcile it. He “circles” the

subject of nature, dealing with it continually. But in each chapter he discusses higher and higher order “uses” of nature.

Chapter II. Commodity

Nature can and should be used to sustain us physically and to keep us alive and physically healthy. But this is an important but only temporary benefit. It is by no means the highest order use. It is the use that most people never move beyond:

Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet, although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. (1109)

Chapter III. Beauty

Nature delights the senses through the beauty of its various forms, all of which function in harmony since they are unified by a universal spiritual presence. We may use nature for the aesthetic pleasure it provides us, and in apprehending the beauty in nature we begin to spark the imagination, which is the divinity within us:

Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. (1110)

The presence of a higher, namely, of a spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with human will, and never separate. Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. (1112)

Chapter IV. Language

Nature is a divine text—the true Word of God. The natural world is an elaborate language that finds its referent in the Universal. All human languages evolve from this primal language of nature. If we interact with nature in solitude we will learn this language, and we will develop the

ability to read the book of nature and to understand ultimate truth. In doing so, we will unify our individual soul with the Spirit in nature:

A third use which Nature subserves to man is that of Language. Nature is a vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and three-fold degree.

1. Words are signs of natural facts.

2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. (1119)

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. (1117)

Chapter V. Discipline

Learning to read and understand the book of nature strengthens and empowers the human mind. Interacting with nature disciplines the mind and develops the imagination (in this case imagination is the same as Reason). We then become better able to understand the truths embodied in nature. We see ourselves as part of a Universal Spirit:

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both the Understanding and the Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding,--its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds everlasting nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and Mind. (1118-1119)

Note here the attempt to unify the mind/body split, to revise or reconfigure traditional Platonic and Judeo-Christian Idealism. This is an apparent or seeming contradiction of his previous distinction between the ME and the NOT ME.

The next three chapters explore the implications of these ideas. They continue to circle in order to work out some of the problems that emerge from the mind/body split.

Chapter VI. Idealism

Traditional Western idealism commits an error in its separation of nature and spirit. The transcendental aspect of Nature can be expressed in terms of the fixed and permanent physical laws that govern its operation—things like Newton’s law of gravitation or the principles that govern photosynthesis. The laws themselves are immaterial, but they are nevertheless real. They are intimately linked to physical nature itself. Thus nature and spirit are inextricably conjoined, part and parcel of one another:

Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. (1123)

The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. (1124)

In this last quotation we see Emerson struggling with his own ideas. He tends here to do what his predecessors in the Idealist tradition have done--He values mind over body while desperately trying not to.

Chapter VII. Spirit

Emerson continues trying to solve this philosophical problem by asserting again that nature and spirit are inseparable expressions of one another:

Therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. (1129)

Chapter VIII. Prospects

Emerson concludes by repeating in a varied form the idea that the whole of nature is unified by a Universal Spirit. The individual human soul is a part of that spirit and the individual human is therefore divine. His only failure is in not recognizing the divinity within:

When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. (1130-1131)

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of his spirit. (1133)

Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. (1134)

Thus, Emerson attempts to constitute a new Idealism founded upon the reconsideration and rejection of the dualism of mind and body. He does so, at times, successfully. But in other instances, he falls into the trap of the previous conceptualization, namely, privileging mind (spirit, soul) over body (our physical selves). It is a problem that he, and other

transcendentalists, especially Thoreau and Whitman, recognize and continue to attempt to work out, as we shall see.

---Dr. Steven FryeProfessor of EnglishCalifornia State University, Bakersfield

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature (1836)

Day One: What does Emerson mean by the term Nature? How does he define it?

Day One: What role should Nature play in the life of a thoughtful human being?

Day Two: From Emerson’s perspective, what is the relationship between Beauty and Truth?

Day Two: Discuss Emerson’s theory of language. Explore the relationship between language, Nature, and the transcendent.

Day Two: In what way does Emerson’s Transcendentalism reflect the influence of the American Calvinism that preceded him? In what way does he challenge this Calvinist view of the world and human nature?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Emerson’s “The American Scholar”

1) What social and political forces is Emerson reacting against, by implication rather than directly?

2) How has contemporary society corrupted the role of the scholar, altered his identity?

3) What does Emerson mean by “Man Thinking”? How is “Man Thinking” an alternative to the contemporary corruption of the scholar?

4) What value does Emerson place on the received knowledge gained from books? What role should books play in the life of the American scholar?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Group Discussion Questions on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet”

1) Discuss the implications of Emerson’s ideas in (1836) Nature on his theories of the identity and role of the poet. What makes the poet unique? What purpose does he/she perform for the rest of us?

2) Explore the passage on page 1177-1178 beginning “But the highest minds. . .” and moving to the end of the paragraph. Discuss the passage as a whole, considering especially what he means when he says we are “children of the fire.”

3) Consider how the poet is both similar and different from the rest of the human race? What are some of those similarities and differences?

4) Explore the passage on 1178 beginning “For the Universe has three children. . .” What is the poet’s role in this universe and what level of importance does Emerson assign to the poet?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1846)

1) Consider the social and moral philosophy conveyed in “Economy,” and “Sounds.”

How does Thoreau extend or borrow ideas conveyed by Emerson?

What about Thoreau’s treatment of these ideas is different?

Consider the historical context within which Thoreau is writing. What manner of living does he observe in the world that he sees fit to challenge? Why? Is his challenge legitimate?

In what way have his ideas been influential in the development of American culture? Where have we seen them appear?

Where do we see the influence of Thoreau today?

2) In “Higher Laws,” consider notions of American Transcendentalist “Idealism.” How does Thoreau contend with the Mind/Body problem?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”

1) Discuss Thoreau’s attitude toward government.

What is the purpose and function of government? How well does it currently function and what are the problems associated with it.

What evidence does he find for those problems? What should be the source of a truly just government? Is Thoreau’s social theory workable? If not, why not. If so, what human attribute

does it depend upon?

2) In what way does Thoreau’s essay reflect the influence of Emerson and Emersonian Transcendentalism?

3) Discuss the influence of this essay on subsequent social movements, in the twentieth century especially. Can you point to any social movements that seem to apply Thoreau’s ideas?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Walt Whitman’s “Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass” and “Song of Myself”

1) To what extent do both the Preface and “Song of Myself” reflect the essential elements of American Transcendentalism?

How does Whitman contend with the Mind/Body problem? What is the source of human wisdom and truth? How is human nature conceptualized?

2) Discuss the role and purpose of the poet as it is characterized in the Preface.

3) In “Song of Myself,” to what extent does Whitman extend, challenge, or modify Emerson’s Transcendentalism?

4) Discuss Whitman’s “I” person in “Song of Myself.” What thematic purpose does it perform?

5) Explicate the symbol of the grass in stanza six. How does this symbol function to resolve some of the “problems” with Transcendentalist philosophy?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Group Discussion Questions for Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”

1) Discuss the persona’s transformation. How is that transformation orchestrated? How does he change and what does he become?

2) Discuss the birds: their song, their relationship, and the language use to represent them. What do they suggest symbolically?

3) Discuss Whitman’s poetics as they appear in the form of the poem. Also consider tone and language use.

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

1) Discuss the persona and the genre. How does the persona change and how is this change related to the genre Whitman employs?

2) Discuss the images/symbols of lilac, star, and bird. What do they suggest and how do they help to orchestrate the persona’s transformation.

3) Consider the poem’s tone and the tonal shifts that occur throughout the poem. How does Whitman orchestrate those shifts? Language? Images? Line rhythms?

4) To what extend does this poem compare and to what extent does it contrast with Whitman’s other poems? What makes it unique among his corpus?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

1) Discuss the perspective of the persona. To what extent is it Whitman himself? To what extent is it a created device designed to convey theme?

2) Discuss the formal poetics. What kinds of verse lines are used? Explicate a few lines formally to demonstrate the line forms employed. Consider especially parallel structure and the specific nature of Whitman’s free verse.

3) Consider Whitman’s use of imagery. What kinds of images does he employ? How does he integrate disparate image patterns? To what purpose?

4) Consider theme. To what extent does he extend, amplify, or modify the Transcendentalism of Emerson?

Negative or “Dark Romanticism”

Bedford Entries

Romanticism

Gothic and the Gothic NovelAllegory

Grotesque

The Sublime

Major Social and Intellectual Influences

Rise of modern science and technologyIncreasing secularization of diversification in religion

German romantic philosophy

Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Muller

The dark strand of British literary Romanticism

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley

Major Twentieth-Century Theorists of Nineteenth-Century Romanticism

Arthur Lovejoy, “On the Discriminations of the Romanticisms”Rene Wellek, “The Concept of Romanticism”

Morse Peckham, The Triumph of Romanticism

M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp and Natural Supernaturalism

Major Tenets and Themes of Negative Romanticism

Skepticism of the Enlightenment with its “Reason” based epistemology

Skepticism of Positive Romanticism’s (Transcendentalism) belief in attainable

Truth and permanent “apotheosis,” epistemic and spiritual self-realization

Romantic emphasis on the power of imagination, vision, and intuition

Uncertainty, ambiguity, doubt, and mystery on matters metaphysical, epistemological,

and psychological

Major Genre and Subgenre and aesthetic devices (many of which interpenetrate)

Gothic romance

Metaphysical romanceEpistemological romance

Psychological romance

Romantic irony

The grotesque

The Arabesque

The sublime

Major Practitioners in America

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia”

1) Discuss the features of genre in the story. What is the genre? What elements are employed? Consider character, imagery, style, mood.

2) Consider Poe’s use of language specifically. How would you characterize it? How does it contribute to the mood and theme of the story?

3) To what extent is ambiguity a defining feature? Where do you find ambiguity?

4) What seems to be Poe’s purpose? What does he want his audience to believe about the nature of reality?

5) How and to what extent does this story fit under the category of “Negative Romanticism”?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”

1) Discuss the features of genre in the story. What kind of Gothic romance is this? To what extent do psychological themes dominate? Are there any metaphysical elements involved?

2) Consider Poe’s use of language specifically. How would you characterize it? How does it contribute to the mood and theme of the story?

3) To what extent is ambiguity a defining feature? Where do you find ambiguity?

4) What seems to be Poe’s purpose? What does he want his audience to believe about the nature of reality?

5) How and to what extent does this story fit under the category of “Negative Romanticism”?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

1) In what sense does this story fit within the context of Hawthorne’s definition of the “romance?”

2) Discuss Giovanni’s rather complicated emotional reaction to Beatrice from the beginning the end, especially considering his anger toward her. To what extend is he justified?

3) Discuss the profuse use of natural (garden) imagery. Are there allusions working here?

4) Considering all the characters, allusions, images, discuss the thematics of the story?

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Group Discussion Questions for Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

1) Discuss the issue of subgenre. What subgenre does Hawthorne employ in the novel? Is there more than one? To what extent does he challenge the boundaries of those subgenre (s)?

2) Discuss the issue of character and character complexity. What motivates the thoughts and actions of Hester? What motivates the thoughts and actions of Dimmesdale? What motivates the thoughts and actions of Chillingworth? In what sense are they round and dynamic characters? What do they learn about

themselves and their world?

3) To what extent does the novel reflect personal and social concerns and issues that transcend time and place?

4) How is human nature portrayed and characterized in the various characters of the novel?

What drives motivate us? What are some of our typical virtues and vices?

5) Consider the issue of style. How does Hawthorne use language? Consider word choice, sentence structure,

imagery, metaphor, and other forms of written expression.

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Procedure and Discussion Questions for Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

1) Scan the poem, identifying versification patterns and stresses. Note that some will be “regular” and some will not. Is there a standard meter?

2) Identify the poetic situation or setting. What happens in the poem, or what is the persona contemplating?

3) Discuss the major literary devices or images the poem employs.

4) Where is the poem oblique or ambiguous? What do you make of it?

5) Discuss the themes of the poem.

Focus on the poem I assign you. Be prepared to present your ideas to the class as a group

English 380

American Renaissance

Dr. Steven Frye

Discussion Questions for Selected Chapters of Melville’s Moby-Dick

1) Discuss the metaphor of the “lee shore.” How does Bulkington metaphorically establish a pattern for living that, from Herman Melville’s point of view, we should all follow?

2) Discuss “the Whiteness of the Whale.” Consider specifically the last paragraph? What is Ishmael contemplating? Where is he emotionally at this moment?

3) Discuss the metaphor of “the mat-maker.” What philosophical issues does Herman Melville explore and what does he conclude about those issues?

4) Discuss “The Doubloon.” What does this chapter tell us about Melville’s view of individual perception and the interpretation of experience?

Discussion Questions for Melville’s Moby-Dick

1) Discuss Melville’s use of form. What genres are at work in the various sections of the book? Hint: There are many. Look to individual chapters as well as the book as a whole.

2) Consider Melville’s use of literary devices such as symbol, allegory, metaphor, and allusion.

3) Discuss Melville use of language.

4) Consider Melville’s poem “Art,” first published in Timoleon, around the time of Melville’s death. How does it help us understand his aesthetic (his idea of art) as it appears in Moby-Dick?

Art

In placid hours well-pleased we dream

Of many a brave unbodied scheme.

But form to lend, pulsed life create,

What unlike things must meet and mate:

A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;

Sad patience—joyous energies;

Humility—yet pride and scorn;

Instinct and study; love and hate;

Audacity—reverence. These must mate,

And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,

To wrestle with the angel—Art.

5) Melville once said, “To write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme.” What is that mighty theme in Moby-Dick? How is it expressed?

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick

Major Intellectual Influences

American Calvinism

Cosmological determinism

Total depravity

The omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God

German Romanticism

Immanuel Kant - Idealism

Freidrich Schlegel – Truth as fragmentary glimpse

George Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel – Truth as a product of dialogue or interchange

Note: These various figures contradict each other. Melville presents them all in dialogue with

one another.

Major Themes

Dualism

The existence of God

The nature of God

The metaphysical theme – the intersection of necessity, free will, and chance

The epistemological theme – the nature of absolute truth and the degree to which we may

possess it

The psychological theme – What leads to madness? How may we avoid it?

Note: These are only a few of Melville’s many themes

Major Genre Employed

Revenge Tragedy (ala Thomas Kidd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Romance Novel

Elements of the Gothic (dualism of good vs. evil, benevolence vs. malevolence, kindness

vs. brutality, tolerance vs. intolerance; the gothic hero villain [Captain Ahab]; the

architectural motif [descriptions of the whale and ship])

Epic romance

Metaphysical romance

Psychological romance

Epistemological romance

Boy’s adventure tale ala Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island

Travel narrative

Scientific treatise on the whale

Industrial treatise on whaling

Philosophical treatise

Religious treatise

Sermon

Stage Drama

Anthropological study

Natural philosophy ala Darwin (though Melville precedes him, Darwin wrote in the mode of the

nineteenth-century science that was referred to as “natural philosophy,” which emerged in part

from “natural theology.”