New England Renaissance Changed the Face of American Society

In his essay "The Over-Soul", Emerson explained the temper of the individual soul and its relationship to all bes and character, "that great nature in which we rest?that Unite within which everyman's particular being is contained and made one with all other" (Perrin 1998, 1).

The thinking of transcendentalists handle Emerson and Thoreau stemmed from the philosophies of men deal John Locke and Immanuel Kant. Locke argued that we potentiometer sole(prenominal) know what we know "by direct observation with the physical senses," while Kant maintained that "truth is innate in all creation and that acquaintance of it is intuitive rather than perspicacious" (Perrin 1998, 2). Instead of relying on traditional article of belief to discover the god-head, the transcendentalists viewed knowledge of a higher force to be inherent in all human beings. The god in the skies of traditional dogma was part of the self or internally discoverable to Emerson, "The use of goods and services of life gather upms to be to acquaint man with himself?The highest revelation is that God is in every man" (New 2003, 2). Emerson focused on much(prenominal) core values of his philosophy as intuition, individuality, and self-reliance.

Emerson's student and a primary leader of the transcendentalist performance was Henry David Thoreau. While financial backing alone at Walden Pond for a period of deuce years, Thoreau wrote his treatise on transcendentalism known as Walden. Walden combines observation, social review article and philosophical insights from Thoreau. Its m

The philosophies of the transcendentalists were far from the still influential expressions in literature during the New England Renaissance. A base of poets also arose during the period known as the " home poets." The " house poets" included such individuals as Henry Wads expenditure Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Emily Dickinson. The "fireside poets" were creditworthy for creating a renewed interest in meter in American society, where many families would father around the fireside and read their works. The "fireside poets" continued in the humanistic nervure of the transcendentalists.

Poets like Lowell and John Greenleaf Whitier attacked what they found to be the material and dehumanizing factors responsible for the institution of slavery. Such poets were responsible for adding fuel to the abolitionist movement developing in New England. Lowell's works often envisioned his personal pain that most human beings could empathize with, such as the loss of his children in The First Snowfall. Others "fireside poets" like Emily Dickinson were more reclusive and never intended to have their poems published. Nevertheless, we can see the humanism and new techniques exhibited by these poets in her works. one of this is the poem "My Life as a Loaded Gun," in which Dickinson equates a material object, a gun, to the love of a man's life. The beginning(a) stanza describes the gun as someone who was living a lonely life until the man carried it away, "My life had stood-a Loaded Gun- / In Corners-till a Day / The owner passed-identified- / And carried Me away" (Dickinson 1863). At the end of the poem, we see the gun forlorn that the hunter is mortal but it is non-living and will not die, "Though I than He-may longer lie with / He longer must-than I- / For I have but the agent to kill, / without-the power to die" (Dickinson 1863). In this we see the superior worth of human beings compared to material objects. The "fireside" poets were more interested in everyday topics and ideas
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