This marked a growing liberality in religious thought and practice, and this period was significant in terms of religious searching and the development of new forms of religious thought. ... Form, particularly traditional literary forms, mattered much less than inspiration, enthusiasm, and emotion. ... " The poem is innovative both in terms of style and content, forever altering the course of American poetry. ...

• Word Count: 917
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

." - Ralph Waldo Emerson A Condensation of Its Context Toward the end of his notebook, "Naturalist," Ralph Waldo Emerson entered sentence (dated 1853) that marks a symbolic vision of nature familiar to his readers and, in more recent years, of concern to his ecologically minded critics: "He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life." (2) One can see why the tradition of reading Emerson's nature writing and environmental aesthetics in sharp contrast with Henry David Thoreau's--Thoreau viewed as "Emerson's ea...

• Word Count: 9971
• Approx Pages: 40
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

American Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement which took place during the late 1820s and 1830s. ... It is not a rejection of the existance of God, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an individual; - the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self-all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. ...

• Word Count: 1093
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

It is because of this that he is "arguably the most influential American writer" of the eighteen hundreds, and many other writers and thinkers during the time "sought to come to terms" with him (Baym 211). ... Watson in her lecture titled "Emerson and Transcendentalism," Transcendentalism was a religious, philosophical, and literary movement which rejected Enlightenment empiricism and the thoughts of John Locke (Watson 17 Feb 2015). ... By the time she died in 1850 at the young age of forty, Fuller had already published nearly three hundred works "emerging as...

• Word Count: 1963
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

As a follower of transcendentalism, Thoreau projected individualism in his literary works, Walden and "Civil Disobedience." ... Thoreau stated, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish it meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my n...

• Word Count: 2165
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

Even though offering opposing ideas on the various aspects of earthly life, the two literary classics visibly share a common concern for the functions of society, and it is evident that Sinclair Lewis, in his satirical voice, actually viewed the work of Thoreau with the utmost respect. ... Thoreau's simplemindedness in terms of food and diet can be seen in his disregard of yeast and even salt as a necessity to one's survival. ...

• Word Count: 3576
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: High School