Transcendentalism『超验主义』

何谓超验主义:
　　A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.
　　超验主义：一种文学和哲学运动，与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生和玛格丽特·富勒有关，宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握
　　
　　(较简单的一个定义
　　19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths





1. Growth and Development
　　
　　Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America. “The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Spirit is present everywhere.” This new voice led American Romanticism to a new and mature period, the period of New England Transcendentalism. This was the most significant development of American literature in the mid-19th century. “New England Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance” (1836---1855) was the first American intellectual movement, which exerted a tremendous impact on the consciousness of American people. As Lawrence Buell states, “To proclaim transcendentalism’s impact, however, is easier than to define it, for the movement was loosely organized and its boundaries were indistinct” (Elliott 364).
　　New England Transcendentalism was, in essence, romantic idealism on Puritan soil. It was a system of thought that originated from three sources. First William Ellery Channing (1780---1842) was an American Unitarian clergyman. His Unitarianism represented a thoughtful revolt against orthodox Puritanism. Unitarianism believed God as one being, rejecting the doctrine of trinity, stressing the tolerance of difference in religious opinion, and giving each congregation the free control of its own affairs and its independent authority. It laid the foundation for the central doctrines of transcendentalism. Secondly, the idealistic philosophy from France and Germany exerted enormous impact on American intellectuals. Thirdly, oriental mysticism as revealed in Hindu and Chinese classics reached America in English translations. As a result, New England Transcendentalism blended native American tradition with foreign influences.
　　 Dissatisfied with the materialistic-oriented society and eager to save the soul with a doctrine of the mind, some American intellectuals were so athirst for new ideas that they formed an informal discussing group, the Transcendental Club, with some thirty men and women of Boston and Concord in 1836. They were strongly influenced by the new German idealism and delighted in abstract discussion. They met irregularly over the next four years at Ralph Waldo Emerson's home in Concord for the purpose of discussing the new ideas of life and society. This club was the first and most famous of a series of forums that served during the next few decades as social gathering points. It became the movement's magnetic center. From 1836 to 1835, they advocated their views and principles in various magazines. Besides, they even published their journal. The Dial (1840-1844).
　　Their meetings and their journal promoted this movement and added prominence to it. Many people interested in the new ideas of transcendentalism were impressed by the brotherhood of humanity. In order to separate themselves from the evil society, they made two communitarian experiments by establishing ideal communities. George Ripley (1802-1880) set up the Brook Farm on Boston's outskirts, which ran from 1841 to 1847 with emphasis on cooperation without competition. On this farm, people shared in domestic and physical labor, and secured material and cultural welfare. It stressed educational reform and its most distinguished institution was its school. The great novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1806-1864) was once its member. It is a pity that a disastrous fire in the uninsured main building put and end to this experiment. The second experiment is Fruitlands, near Harvard, set up by Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) in 1843. On this farm, Alcott stressed the absolute avoidance of exploitation of man and beast. It lasted less than a year because it was more extreme in practice than the Brook Farm. Alcott also helped to organize and preside over the concord School of Philosophy (1879-1888), a summer seminar. This was the last significant activity of transcendentalism. However, in the 1830s and 1840s,transcendentalism was treated in newspapers and magazines as something between a national laughing stock and a clear menace to organized religion
　　






2. Major Concepts
　　
　　The term “transcendentalism” is derived from the Latin verb transcendere meaning, to rise above, or to pass beyond the limits. Transcendentalism has been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor. As the leader of this movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson interpreted transcendentalism as “whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought,” and as “idealism as it appears in 1842.” He believed that the transcendental law was the “moral law” through which man discovered the nature of God as a living spirit. The major concepts that accompanied transcendentalism can be summarized in the following six points.
　　
　　(1) It stressed the power of intuition, believing that people could learn things both from the outside world by means of the five senses and from the inner world by intuition. But the things they learned from within were truer than the things they learned from without, and transcended them. It held that everyone had access to a source of knowledge that transcended the everyday experiences of sensation and reflection. Intuition was inner light within.
　　
　　(2) As romantic idealism, it placed spirit first and matter second. It believed that both spirit and matter were real but that the reality of spirit was greater than that of matter. Spirit transcended matter, and the permanent reality was the spiritual one. It stressed essence behind appearance.
　　
　　(3) It took nature as symbolic of spirit of God. All things in nature were symbols of the spiritual, of God’s presence. Nature was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. Everything in the universe was viewed as an expression of the divine spirit. Behind physical objects was a universal soul. Nature was God’s enlightenment towards human beings. Therefore, it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on human mind. Nature was ennobling and people were somehow better for being out in the woods or meadows. So people should come close to nature for instructions. Nature not only showed humanity its own materiality but taught human morality. Nature’s beauty was the beauty of human mind. The two were joined together. With this organic view in mind, it stressed unity of humanity and nature.
　　
　　(4) It emphasized the significance of the individual and believed that the individual was the most important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual was self-reliant and unselfish. It held that there was a greatness in all human beings that needed only to be set free. People should depend on themselves for spiritual perfection. As the individual soul could commune with God, it was, therefore, divine. With the assumption of the innate goodness of humanity, it held that the individual soul could reach God without the help of churches or clergy. While stressing individuality, it rejected the restraints of tradition and custom. The transcendentalist had an uncompromising concern for individual’s moral development rather than for social progress. The dignity of the individual remains a vital part of American creed even today.
　　
　　(5) Emerson envisioned religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “Oversoul”. The “Oversoul” as called by Emerson was an all-pervading unitary spiritual power of goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which everyone was a part. It existed in nature and in humanity alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. Generally, the Oversoul referred to spirit of God as the most important thing in the universe. Since the Oversoul was a single essence, and since all people derived their beings from the same source, the seeming diversity and clash of human interests was only superficial, and all people were in reality striving toward the same ends by different but converging paths. Thus was affirmed the universal brotherhood of humanity, and the ultimate resolution of all social problems. The harder each person strove to express his or her individuality, the more faithfully he or she followed the inner voice, the more surely would the aims of his or her life coincide with those of his or her neighbor.
　　
　　(6) It held that commerce was degrading and that a life spent in business was a wasted life. Humanity could be much better off if people paid less attention to the material world in which they lived.
　　


3. Significance
　　
　　 Therefore, transcendentalism can be best understood as a somewhat late and localized manifestation of romantic movement in literature and philosophy. The triumph of intuition over five senses, the exaltation of the individual over society, the critical attitude toward formalized religion, the rejection of any kind of restraint or bondage to custom, the new and thrilling delight in nature --- all these were in some measure characteristic of transcendentalism. These ideas also inspired English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge as well as many German idealist philosophers. As formulated by Emerson, transcendentalism became a clarion call to action, exhorting young people to cast off their deadening enslavement to the past, to follow God within, and to live every moment of life with strenuousness, to regard nature as the great objective lesson proving God’s presence everywhere in His creation.
　　
　　 Transcendentalism was also an ethical guide to life for a young nation of America. It preached the positive life and appealed to the best side of human nature. Therefore, it stressed the tolerance of difference in religious opinion and the free control of his own affairs by each congregation, and called to throw off shackles of custom and tradition, and to go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. It insisted on the essential worth and dignity of the individual as a powerful force for democracy. It also advocated, and practiced, an idealism that was greatly needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity too often became mere opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.
　　
　　 New England Transcendentalism is important to American literature at least for two reasons. On the one hand, it is represented by two major writers of the country----Emerson and Thoreau. They became movers and shakers whose writings have had more and more impact with the passage of time. So far as these two writers are concerned, they were more enduringly important for their ideology than for their actual literary achievement. On the other hand, a new group of writers under the influence of Emerson and Thoreau began to apply transcendental ideas in their works. Almost all the writers of the period were more or less influenced by transcendentalist doctrines. Hawthorne, Melville, Lowell, Dickinson, and Whitman were all exponents of transcendentalism in one way or another. They created one of the most prolific periods in the history of American literature.
　　



4. Weaknesses
　　
　　The transcendentalist movement had a small membership and only lasted for a few years, but it has exerted great impact in the country. As time passes, the term “Transcendentalism” has lost its derogatory sense and become the condensation of American romantic movement in literature of the period. It lasting importance is great. Transcendentalism, however, was never a systematic philosophy. It borrowed from many sources and reconciled few of them. Whenever the demand of logic became too insistent, it turned to mysticism. It became a rationale for the pressure toward expansionism that was already turning people’s minds to the conquest of the West. It resulted far more often in rampant individualism than in a democracy of mutual helpfulness and equal opportunity. The denial of the reality of evil tended to make moral indignation an irrelevant emotion. The failure of transcendentalism as a moral force in American life was its denial of its real spiritual origin. People used it to justify their acquisitiveness and left it up to the principle of compensation to balance the rest of the account. These are its weaknesses.
　　

[ 本帖最后由 转身就跑 于 2007-7-19 00:31 编辑 ]

Romanticism

romanticism, term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th cent.
　　
　　★Characteristics of Romanticism
　　
　　Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism. The basic aims of romanticism were various: a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt against rationalism.





　　Romanticism in Literature
　　
　　〖The United States〗
　　
　　In the United States romanticism had philosophic expression in transcendentalism, notably in the works of Emerson and Thoreau. Poets such as Poe, Whittier, and Longfellow all produced works in the romantic vein. Walt Whitman in particular expressed pride in his individual self and the democratic spirit. The works of James Fenimore Cooper reflected the romantic interest in the historical past, whereas the symbolic novels of Hawthorne and Melville emphasized the movement's concern with transcendent reality.
　　
　　〖England〗
　　
　　Although in literature romantic elements were known much earlier, as in the Elizabethan dramas, many critics now date English literary romanticism from the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798). In the preface to the second edition of that influential work (1800), Wordsworth stated his belief that poetry results from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and pressed for the use of natural everyday diction in literary works. Coleridge emphasized the importance of the poet's imagination and discounted adherence to arbitrary literary rules.
　　
　　Such English romantic poets as Byron, Shelley, Robert Burns, Keats, Robert Southey, and William Cowper often focused on the individual self, on the poet's personal reaction to life. This emphasis can also be found in such prose works as the essays of Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt and in Thomas De Quincey's autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822). The interest of romantics in the medieval period as a time of mystery, adventure, and aspiration is evidenced in the Gothic romance and in the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott. William Blake was probably the most singular of the English romantics. His poems and paintings are radiant, imaginative, and heavily symbolic, indicating the spiritual reality underlying the physical reality.
　　
　　〖Germany〗
　　
　　In Germany the Sturm und Drang school, with its obsessive interest in medievalism, prepared the way for romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel first used the term romantic to designate a school of literature opposed to classicism, and he also applied the philosophical ideas of Immanuel Kant and J. G. Fichte to the “romantic ideal.” Major German writers associated with romanticism include G. E. Lessing, J. G. Herder, Friedrich Hölderlin, Schiller, and particularly Goethe, who had a mystic feeling for nature and for Germany's medieval past.
　　
　　〖France and Other European Countries〗
　　
　　The credo of French romanticism was set forth by Victor Hugo in the preface to his drama Cromwell (1828) and in his play Hernani (1830). Hugo proclaimed the freedom of the artist in both choice and treatment of a subject. The French romantics included Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas père, Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, and George Sand. Other leading romantic figures were Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni in Italy, and Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in Russia.
　　

Puritanism (清教主义)

　　Puritanism, in the 16th and 17th cent., a movement for reform in the Church of England that had a profound influence on the social, political, ethical, and theological ideas of England and America.
　　
　　〖Origins〗
　　
　　Historically Puritanism began early (c.1560) in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as a movement for religious reform. The early Puritans felt that the Elizabethan ecclesiastical establishment was too political, too compromising, and too Catholic in its liturgy, vestments, and episcopal hierarchy. Calvinist in theology, they stressed predestination and demanded scriptural warrant for all details of public worship. They believed that the Scriptures did not sanction the setting up of bishops and churches by the state. The aim of the early Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright was to purify the church (hence their name), not to separate from it. However, by 1567 a small group of lay rigorists was discovered meeting secretly in London to worship after the pattern of the service of the church in Geneva.
　　
　　〖Branches〗
　　
　　Although Puritans believed that if they searched the Scriptures long enough they would eventually agree, they early differed on the nature of the church polity advised in the Bible. The parish was the unit of the Puritan church; the parochial group of church members elected ministers. The main body of Puritans, the Presbyterians (see Presbyterianism), favored a central church government, whereas the separatists, Independents or Congregationalists (see Congregationalism), defined the church as any autonomous congregation of believers, emphasized the point that one could arrive at one's own conclusions in religion, and opposed a national, comprehensive church.
　　
　　〖Persecution and Emigration〗
　　
　　During the reign of James I, the Presbyterian majority unsuccessfully attempted to impose their ideas on the established English church at the Hampton Court Conference (1604). The result was mutual disaffection and a persecution of the Puritans, particularly by Archbishop William Laud, that brought about Puritan migration to Europe and America (see Mayflower). Those groups that remained in England grew as a political party and rose to their greatest power between 1640 and 1660 as a result of the English civil war; during that period the Independents gained dominance. The great Puritan apologist of this period was John Milton. During the Restoration the Puritans were oppressed under the Clarendon Code (1661–65), which secured the episcopal character of the Established Church and, in effect, cast the Puritans out of the Church of England. From this time they were known as nonconformists.
　　
　　〖Influence on American Society〗
　　
　　In New England, in the Puritan “Holy Commonwealth,” some 35 churches had been formed by 1640. The Puritans in New England maintained the Calvinist distinction between the elect and the damned in their theory of the church, in which membership consisted only of the regenerate minority who publicly confessed their experience of conversion. Ministers had great political influence, and civil authorities exercised a large measure of control over church affairs. The Cambridge Platform (1648) expressed the Puritan position on matters of church government and discipline. To the Puritans, a person by nature was wholly sinful and could achieve good only by severe and unremitting discipline. Hard work was considered a religious duty and emphasis was laid on constant self-examination and self-discipline. Although profanation of the Sabbath day, blasphemy, fornication, drunkenness, playing games of chance, and participation in theatrical performances were penal offenses, the severity of the code of behavior of the early Puritans is often exaggerated.
　　
　　In 1662 it was made easier for the unregenerate majority to become church members in Massachusetts by the adoption of the Half-Way Covenant. Clerical power was lessened by the expansion of New England and the opening of frontier settlements filled with colonists who were resourceful, secular, and engaged in a struggle to adapt to a difficult environment. In 1692 in Massachusetts a new charter expressed the change from a theocratic to a political, secular state; suffrage was stripped of religious qualifications.
　　
　　After the 17th cent. the Puritans as a political entity largely disappeared, but Puritan attitudes and ethics continued to exert an influence on American society. They made a virtue of qualities that made for economic success—self-reliance, frugality, industry, and energy—and through them influenced modern social and economic life. Their concern for education was important in the development of the United States, and the idea of congregational democratic church government was carried into the political life of the state as a source of modern democracy. Prominent figures in New England Puritanism include Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, Roger Williams, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather.
　　
　　〖Bibliography〗
　　
　　See P. Miller, The New England Mind (2 vol., 1939–53); E. S. Morgan, Visible Saints (1965); J. E. C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (2d ed. 1967); H. C. Porter, Puritanism in Tudor England (1970); C. L. Cohen, God's Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (1986); C. E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety (1986); S. Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (1991).

Modernism


1. Definition
　　The concept of modernism emerged in the eighteenth century when the classicists mocked those who opposed them and called them modernists. Dr Samuel Johnson says in the Dictionary of the English Language that the word was coined by Johnathan Swift in a letter to Alexander pope. The word was given a new meaning by the French poet Bordelaire and the publication of his collection of poem《恶之花》marked the beginning of modernism in literature. Now it is a comprehensive term　applied to international tendencies and movements in all creative arts in the 20th century. In a broad sense, it is applied to writing marked by a strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression.
　　
　　2. Major philosophical Influences on modernism
　　1) Darwinism
　　
　　2) Marxism
　　
　　3) Freudianism
　　
　　3. Major ideas of modernism
　　1) It employs a distinctive kind of imagination, which insists on having its general frame of reference within itself. Thus it practices solipsism( 唯我论). It believes that we create the world in the act of perceiving it.
　　2) It implies a historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, loss and despair. It rejects traditional values and assumptions. And it looks for fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe. Many modernists are philosophical existentialists.
　　
　　3) It elevates the individual and his inner being over social man and prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious. (The psychologies of Freud and Jung are seminal in modernist literature.) Its most interesting artistic strategy is its attempt to deal with the unconscious. It celebrates passion and will over reason and systematic morality.
　　
　　4) It rejects the traditional rhetoric by which tradition values and assumptions were communicated. It is bent on stylistic innovations and experiments with language, form, symbol and myth.
　　
　　4. Modernist movements
　　 1) symbolism, 2) imagism, 3) aestheticism, 4) expressionism, 5) the stream of consciousness, 6) surrealism, 7) existentialism, 8) theatre of the absurd
　　
　　5. Major American modernists
　　1. Novelists
　　Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis (Main Street), Scott Fitzgerald(The Great Gatsby), Ernest Hemingway(The Sun Also Rises, A Fare well to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls), William Faulkner(The Sound and the Fury).
　　2. Poets
　　Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams
　　3. Dramatists
　　 Eugene O’Neil, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller