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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page paper comparing and contrasting the ways in which Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson exhibited the influence of Emerson and Thoreau's Transcendentalism. The ideas expressed are supported by quotes from the literary works mentioned and several critical sources. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Tranroot.doc
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humanity is united through a kind of common consciousness; humanity is one with nature; and nature is one with God. Truth, to Emerson, is the expression of personal insights rather
than a rational deduction from premises provided by history and science. And if Emerson set the tone for transcendental philosophy, Henry David Thoreau put it into practice. Thoreau, who
felt that society itself creates evil in mankind, spent two years in a home-made house in the woods at Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts -- an experience that forms the
basis for his book Walden. During this period, Thoreau made deliberate attempts to see how simple he could make his life and still remain comfortable. He did not hunt, as
he felt a kinship with the animals that surrounded him; he seldom fished, as he considered it a waste of time when there was so much vegetation available. While Emerson
thrived immersed in society, Thoreau felt his isolation was necessary in order for him to "front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" (Thoreau, 167). The writings of these two transcendentalists had considerable influence
on other writers who were to follow them. However, just as Emerson did not express his philosophy in the same way as Thoreau, followers found one exponent of transcendentalism more
congenial than the other and combined elements of both. Emily Dickinson, for example, incorporated both Emersons contemplative meditations and Thoreaus intense worship of nature; Walt Whitman combined Thoreaus vital activism
with Emersons love of mankind. Emersons period of literary influence was the late 1830s through the early 1880s, most heavily concentrated in the years immediately before the Civil War
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