Unit Three The Spirit of Individualism Part One

Unit Three The Spirit of Individualism Part One – Celebrations of the Self

The movement known as Romanticism began around the beginning of the 19 th century. It was a reaction to the 18 th century Age of Reason and the strict Puritan way of life.

Romantic writers saw the limitations of reason and celebrated instead the glories of the individual spirit, the emotions, and the imagination as basic elements of human nature

The splendors of nature inspired them more than the fear of God. Some romantics were also fascinated with the supernatural.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Washington Irving were by far the most popular writers of the time.

Romantic writers were concerned with atmosphere, sentiment, and optimism

Transcendentalists Transcend: to go beyond the ordinary limits. Transcendental: being beyond ordinary experience, thought, or belief. Transcendentalism: a philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical (practical)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (a transcendentalist writer) interpreted the belief as follows: every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition.

Henry David Thoreau was an extreme transcendentalist. He turned his back on material rewards and devoted his life to the study of nature and his own individual spirit.

Walden Thoreau’s account of the two years he lived alone in a one -room shack in the country.