Literature and Nature
University of Helsinki/
Comparative
Literature
11.11.2014
M.A. Pekka Raittinen
Transcendentalism, Henry David
Thoreau and Walt Whitman
transitive verb
1 a: to rise above or go beyond the limits of
b: to triumph over the negative or restrictive
aspects of
c: to be prior to, beyond, and above (the
universe or material existence)
 2: to outstrip or outdo in some attribute,
quality, or power
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intransitive verb: to rise above or extend
notably beyond ordinary limits
Transcend:
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In New England from
(about) 1830’s to
1850’s
Philosophical, literary,
social and religious
movement?
Time of ”The Great
Transformation” in
American history =>
The Depression of
1830’s, immigration,
abolitionism …
Concord,
Massachusetts
Transcendentalism
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Unitarian Church
Immanuel Kant: Critique
of Pure Reason =>
Metaphysical truths
unobtainable by reason
German and English
Romanticism; Thomas
Carlyle
Swedish mystic
Emmanuel Swedenborg
Eastern philosophies
and religions – Hinduism
The Roots of Transcendentalism
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Essayist, lecturer,
poet…
First studied to be a
priest in the
Unitarian Church,
like his father
”The American
Scholar” (1837) =>
”Intellectual
Declaration of
Independence”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 –
1882)
”Nature” (1836);
other essays ”SelfReliance”, ”The OverSoul”, ”The Poet”
 "Philosophically
considered, the
universe is composed
of Nature and the
Soul.“
 In nature man is
closest to God =>
“Transparent eyeball”

Emerson and Nature
Transcendentalism as a
social movement
-
George Ripley’s Brook
Farm and Fruitlands –
Utopian-Socialist
communitarism
- Bronson Alcott –
experimental pedagogy
- Orestes Brownson ”The
Laboring Classes” (1840)
- Margaret Fuller (1810 –
1850) – women’s rights
advocate
- Numerous other social
and reform movements;
abolitionism, temperance
movement, vegetarism,
co-operative societies
etc.
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Born in Concord,
worked as a school
teacher ”handy-man”
and finally as a
surveyor
Moved to his Walden
Pond cabin on 4th of
July 1845
First book A Week on
Concord and
Merrimack Rivers
(1849)
Life of Henry David Thoreau (1817
– 1862)
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Two years in the
woods=> but written
and re-written over a
long period
Year’s cycle in nature
=> Ends in ”Spring”
Genre?
Autobiography?
Travel book?
Bildungsroman?
Pastoral? Epic?
Individualism => The
book’s ”I” (”Eye”)
Walden or Life in the Woods
(1854)
Walden’s first chapter
”Economy”
 So-called four
essentials: ”Food,
Clothing, Shelter and
Food”
 “The cost of a thing is
the amount of what I
will call life which is
required to be
exchanged for it,
immediately or in the
long run.”
 Ecological life?

Thoreau, economy, individual and
ecology
”Walking” (1861)
Political thought:
”Resistance to Civil
Goverment” or ”Civil
Disobedience”; ”A Plea
For Captain John
Brown”; ”Life Without
Principle”
 ”The travel books”:
Cape Cod; The Maine
Woods
 Later interest in natural
science; essay ”Wild
Apples” among others
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Other works
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Continued the
Transcendentalist’s
ideals in his poetry
Leaves of Grass
(1855 – 1881)
Long poem”Song of
Myself” => free
verse
”Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking”;
”Calamus” poems
Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
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Quentin Anderson: The
Imperial Self (1971)
Walt Whitman => Beat
Literature=> 60’s
counterculture
Thoreau’s and Emerson’s
influence on the
environmental movement
=> John Muir
”Civil Disobedience” =>
Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin
Luther King
In [American] popular
culture, television, movies
=>
Legacy and influence
Terrence Mallick: The Thin Red
Line(1998) and The New World (2005)