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American Transcendentalism " It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, always do what you are afraid to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 1

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American transcendentalism is essentially a kind of practice by which the world of facts and the categories of common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the categories of imagination. The point of this exchange is to make life better by lifting us above the conflicts and struggles that weigh on our souls. As these chains fall away, our souls rise to heightened experiences of freedom and union with the good. Emerson and Thoreau are the two most significant nineteenth century proponents of American transcendentalism.

Looking at the world through common sense categories, such as time, space, and causation, yields hard and fast limits that can hurt us. Causation seems to make certain outcomes unavoidable whether we like them or not. Space separates us from the ones we love and the places we would rather be. Not to be outdone, time brings all good things to an end and converts the living into the dead. The categories of imagination free us from these detestable limits. We can imagine a world in which physical space is no more than an idea, enabling us to move from place to place at the speed of our thoughts. Emanation and fulguration make congenial substitutes for causation, because they generate only what is true, beautiful, and good. Not even time presents a problem for imagination, since we can readily view all things from the standpoint of eternity.

Most philosophers start with theories, searching for ways in which to practice what they preach only if they are serious about their philosophies. The transcendentalists reversed this procedure. They began with practices and then attempted to establish them on solid theoretical foundations. Yet these practices all involved spurning certain facts in favor of ideas, leading them invariably to theories that are inconsistent and vague. Their honesty would not allow them to spurn all facts, so they were ever at work reshaping intractable facts to fit their theories or stretching the fabric of their views to cover uncooperative facts. Unwitting victims of their own scruples, they found themselves hating facts that did not fit the mold and being frustrated with theories they knew failed to capture all the facts.

The final victim was transcendentalism itself. Critics, eager to wield the sword of criticism, overlooked the life-enhancing practices at the core of transcendentalism, concentrating their efforts on the many chinks and thin plates in its theoretical armor. Their blades penetrated easily, and they quickly pronounced their victim hopelessly baffling. Even friendly critics felt obliged to begin their articles with the proviso that transcendentalism is not easily articulated.

The transcendentalists were suspended between imagination and common sense. If they had been consistent empiricists or materialists, their theories might have been securely founded on facts. Had they been fully fledged idealists or rationalists, their theories might have been firmly fixed on logical relations. In reality, they were neither consistent nor fully fledged theorists. Emerson complained of a see-saw in his voice. Yet what is most valuable in the legacy of transcendentalism is not theoretical and is not in need of theoretical backing. It is the practices by which the transcendentalists managed, at least occasionally, to re-make the world in the image of what they loved.

Table of Contents

1. Emerson and His Practices

Although he denied he was a transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was rightly viewed by his peers and is rightly viewed by contemporary scholars as the primary philosophical exponent of American transcendentalism, followed by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Emerson distinguished at least three practices by which facts may be exchanged for ideas. The first enacts a form of idealism. Instead of seeing the world as an independent power that may lay waste to our purposes and plans, we can view it as a display of images or pictures created by us, rendering it harmless and even benevolent. Secondly, we can focus on moral actions and rejoice in their goodness. The third practice distinguished by Emerson is perhaps the one for which transcendentalism is best known. It is that of contemplating beauty.

These practices come naturally to many of us. We many not connect them to Emerson, his contemporaries, or the period in American intellectual history ─roughly between the publication of Emerson's "Nature" in 1836 and Thoreau's death in 1862─when transcendentalism flourished as a movement; but inasmuch as we seek to improve our lives by turning away from facts and embracing ideas, we are transcendentalists.

2. German Influence

Word of Kant's transcendental idealism may have reached Emerson through Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-1890), a Unitarian minister who had studied in Germany and knew German philosophy in its native tongue. In 1836, Hedge, Emerson, and George Ripley (1802-1880) founded an informal group they called Hedge's Club for the purpose of stimulating discussion of current topics in philosophy and theology. The group convened irregularly for about seven years and grew to include at least a dozen members. It became known as the Transcendental Club. These meetings provided ample opportunity for Hedge to share his knowledge of Kant's transcendental philosophy with Emerson.

The heart of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the distinction he draws between the transcendental and the transcendent. The transcendental refers to the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience. Input from perception is grasped through twelve categories, space, time, and what he calls the transcendental unity of apperception. These are structures of mind, so without them experience would be impossible. In contrast, the transcendent is that which lies beyond the scope of experience and is therefore inaccessible to conceptual knowledge. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant rejects the classic arguments for the existence of God on the grounds that knowledge of the transcendent is impossible. Ironically, the transcendental structure of mind is necessarily incapable of providing knowledge of the transcendent.

But Kant followed the Critique of Pure Reason with the Critique of Practical Reason, in which he adds an important qualification to his original view that God is unknowable. The transcendent, he argues, is the very foundation of morality. If not for God, the wicked might go unpunished and the righteous unrewarded. We may not be able to have conceptual knowledge of the transcendent, but we are morally obligated to act as the transcendent in the form of the free and rational moral will.

Kant's view of our relation to the transcendent underwent a second transformation in his third major work, the Critique of Judgment. There he reconsiders some of the classic arguments for God's existence and opts for the teleological. Organic beings are purposive, he tells us, though we cannot glean what their purposes are. Their purposiveness consists in the fact that they and their parts are mutually supporting. The parts are means to the wholes, and the wholes are means to the parts. Two important conclusions fall out of this analysis. The first is that everything can be seen as beautiful, because all objects have form, which hints at a kind of purposiveness based on the internal complexity of objects. This purposiveness of form creates a universal disinterested satisfaction that is experienced as beauty. The second conclusion is that conceptual understanding of beauty is impossible for human beings.

Although they are very different philosophies, the influence of Kant's transcendental idealism on American transcendentalism is easy to see. The philosophies are markedly different because the Americans did not preserve Kant's distinction between the transcendent and the transcendental. This distinction provides the framework for Kant's entire system as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason, but the transcendentalists were not interested in systems or the frameworks of systems. What attracted them to Kant's philosophy was the sentiment behind his words. One look at the prevailing sentiment of American transcendentalism and Kant's influence is unmistakable. The Americans eagerly joined him in celebrating the rightness of moral action, the beauty of the world, and the majesty of God. Kant's influence also shows itself in the view of the nature of beauty embraced by the transcendentalists, namely that it surpasses all understanding.

3. British Influence

The word "transcendental" brings to mind Kant and the German philosophers he influenced, but German thinkers were not the only ones to leave their mark on American transcendentalism. Emerson was a great admirer of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both of whom he met when he traveled to Europe in 1832. Their romanticism was intoxicating to him, and he seems to have passed some of that intoxication to his friend Thoreau. The British romantics shared the same love of beauty, morality, and God that animated both Kant and the American transcendentalists, but the romantics had developed a unique perspective on our relation to those realities. This perspective provided one of the central features of American transcendentalism.

The British romantics saw tremendous beauty and goodness in the world. At the same time, they saw that all of that goodness and beauty is flawed. Human beings often embody great virtues, but this is not always so. Sometimes their behavior is monstrous in its selfishness and cruelty. The sky, the meadow, and the rose are breathtakingly beautiful, but as time passes their beauty fades. This double vision of the romantics, although it did not betray any facts, nevertheless placed them in the uncomfortable position of both hating and loving the world.

To get out of their predicament, the romantics made a bold move. They set their sights on the perfect, which for them could exist only beyond the awful limits of the world. Yet they could not forget that they were, as flesh and blood, inextricably tied to those very limits. Nor could they forget that it was those very limits that provided the precious glimpses of beauty and goodness, however degraded, that they cherished. This was a great tragedy, they decided, and it was made even greater by the fact that it was inevitable. If you live in this world and you have enough humanity to love the good and the beautiful, you will be constantly assailed by the pain of falling short of those ideals. Yet, they suggested, the more the tragedy of life appeared to us in all of its inevitability and pain, the more beautiful life would be in our eyes.

Had they embraced this perspective at face value, the transcendentalists might have been cheered. As a sequence of random events, some good and others bad, life is arguably meaningless and not worth living. But view it as a tragedy and life takes on a marvelous aesthetic unity. Anguish and tears become literary realities, beautiful in their significance and in the timeless moral lessons they convey. But the transcendentalists were too pragmatic to embrace such an intellectual view of life. The world was too much with them, and although they never tired of translating facts into ideas, they could not shake the sense that facts were somehow more real. Instead of cheering them up, their contact with romanticism ultimately saddened them. They fell in love with the perfect like good romantics, but they could find little beauty in the countless misfortunes that befell them. They felt betrayed by life. In Emerson, this feeling expressed itself in the form of sheer disbelief at the terrible things that happened to him. In Thoreau, it created a thin layer of bitterness and resentment that never dissipated.

The influence of the British romantics shaped American transcendentalism at least as much and probably more than that of Kant's transcendental philosophy. Their influence contributed a longing for the perfect, one of the central features of transcendentalism in America. The other side of this contribution, equally central, was a treacherous undercurrent of disappointment and sadness.

4. Idealism

The idealism of the American transcendentalists, like their morality and their love of beauty, took the form of practices before it became, as an afterthought, a sort of theory. Emerson stood with his head between his legs and took note of the fact that this opened a very different reality. His long country rambles produced in him a profound feeling of the lawfulness and rationality of nature. The passions that stirred in his breast often burst forth in the form of an essay or a poem. Looking at the world from different angles, delighting in the patterns nature manifests, and writing poetry or prose are idealistic practices in the sense that they give consciousness a kind of priority. In creating new experiences or ideas, we seem to create new worlds, and mind takes on a status close to that of a divinity. The old familiar facts, when filtered through the categories of imagination, are given an almost miraculous appearance. We are free from their tedious and often sorrowful limits to roam at liberty in thought.

For the transcendentalists, this freedom was almost always short-lived. This is because they felt they should ground their idealistic practices in a consistent theory. The freedom and satisfaction their practices provided, they reasoned, would be more secure if given an adequate theoretical backing. Their reasoning may have been sound, but their attempt to ground their practices in an adequate theory had the opposite effect. They became tangled in theoretical problems that proved intractable, and this made engaging with ideas for the sake of the activity itself more difficult. An ulterior motive for this engagement was always pressing on them. The ideas could not be fully trusted unless somehow it could be shown that they captured the inner nature of things.

But the main idea implied by the transcendentalists' practices, that all existence must conform to consciousness, was verified by their experience only occasionally. There were flashes of verification, as when Emerson dreamed he ate the world, but all too often it was consciousness that had to give way to the cold facts of existence. The loss of his beloved wife Ellen Tucker, his cherished son Waldo, and his dear friend Thoreau signaled to Emerson that something alien to mind was at work in the world.

What this alien something might be, the transcendentalists had no clear idea. Their idealism gave consciousness, rational principles, and human values the status of omnipotent governing powers. Evil was that for which there would be compensation, or it was an instrument necessary for the creation of a good far greater than any that would have been possible without its use. It was, in short, thoroughly intelligible, just, and even benevolent: a low mood or a contradictory thought passing through the Oversoul for the sake of its ultimate enrichment. Evil is good, or rather it has to be good if one takes the idealism of the transcendentalists at face value. Not even they were capable of doing this all the time, yet they had no means of understanding evil except through the lens of their idealism, nor would they have been comfortable viewing it through a different lens as a brute fact or an irrational power.

The only option for the transcendentalists was to live with one more evil, namely the fact that evil positively confounded their attempts to explain it. This made the evils they suffered that much worse, adding avoidable surprise and puzzlement to unavoidable pain. Had they been content to practice their idealism without attempting to expound it, they might have saved themselves considerable grief. Their idealistic practices alone do not give mind the kind of priority proper to a power, but they do give it a sort of valuational priority. In lavishly applying the categories of imagination to the world and marveling at the results, we affirm the priority of consciousness and its products in the sense of loving them the most. As long as this does not lead us to the tenuous theory that all existence must submit to mind, we are free to understand evil through the categories of common sense, as a rogue power that goes against our purposes and often overwhelms them. This does not translate evil into good, but it at least removes the sting of surprise and confusion when evil strikes.

5. Morality

Emerson was often accused of being a reluctant reformer, and behind those accusations there was a kernel of truth. His contemporaries in the United States and Europe were hungry for moral progress, and they wasted no time putting shoulder to wheel for their favorite causes. Emerson was different in that his temperament inclined him to be first a scholar. The purpose of scholars, he said, is to nurture the good in others; but what makes a scholar is the ability to see the larger picture of things, and for this a certain distance from the heat of action is required. Emerson was by nature a visionary and a poet, not a man of action. No matter how much he sympathized with the ideals to which reformers aspired, he could not engage in actual reform without some initial discomfort. It was not what he was born to do.

Yet Emerson's accusers failed to see the full reality of the accused. He may have hesitated before throwing his weight behind a cause for fear of losing the reflective distance he naturally valued; but if the cause was just he almost always ended up fighting for it. When the government of the United States announced plans to force Cherokees from their native lands, Emerson wrote President Van Buren in protest. The reflective but deeply moral Emerson opposed slavery openly both in writing and in public lectures. Inspired by his friend Margaret Fuller, Emerson supported the burgeoning women's rights movement, becoming Vice President of the New England Women's Suffrage Association in 1869. It is ironic that for all the accusations of reluctance made against him by his peers, today's scholars tend to view Emerson as one of the nineteenth century's most important reformers.

Emerson's reflective temperament made him skeptical of reform movements, which seemed to him to be driven by narrow and hasty views. At the same time, he was convinced that it is not the group but the individual that is the ultimate agent of moral progress. He admired and celebrated the moral actions of principled individuals and was often spurred by them to act in spite of his temperament. This is transcendentalism at its moral best. Moral action is not governed or called forth by a theory; it is a spontaneous response to the feeling of one's individual potentiality combined with one's natural love of the good. Assuming the good is not conceived narrowly, as it almost never was by Emerson, this kind of morality is less problematic than many others. Emerson was lead by it to some of his most important contributions to the reform movements of his day.

Again, the problem came when the transcendentalists attempted to ground their spontaneous practices in a theory that lodged their values in the nature of things. Emerson said many times that nature itself is the supreme model and ultimate ground of morality, since it is a manifestation of timeless moral laws. All evil is a form of instruction, pointing the way to better lives and a better world. No doubt Emerson embraced this view wholeheartedly, but its implications for specific evils that visited him created turmoil in his soul. He could not hide from himself the fact that some evils seemed to lack pedagogical value. It was hardly possible for him to view the death of his five year old son as instruction for the improvement of life. Nor was he easily able to see the fire that consumed his home as a lesson in how to make the world a better place. Their view of the world as inherently moral, like the idealism they attempted to develop, created for the transcendentalists a painful rift between the theory they thought they should live by and the actual events, actions, and emotions that filled their lives.

This was less so, at least as regards morality, for Thoreau. Emerson's greatest student was less committed than his mentor to the view that nature is intrinsically moral. Thoreau, moreover, was more practical than Emerson in moral matters. He perceived with greater clarity the fact that institutions exist because of the free actions of individuals. If individual slaveholders decided to stop holding slaves, slavery would gradually be destroyed. Nor did Thoreau confuse this practical insight with Emerson's more theoretical position that individuals are the ultimate moral agents because they have access, through reason and contemplation, to the moral laws inherent in nature.

While Emerson's love of reflection often slowed his response time, Thoreau tended to react to moral problems quickly and decisively. He immediately urged those around him to examine their consciences and change their behaviors accordingly. Thoreau's letter in support of John Brown, a controversial abolitionist convicted of treason, captures this pragmatic approach to morality. The letter is full of motivational rhetoric. Advancing the cause of abolition, Thoreau seems to have reasoned, was simply a matter of convincing enough individuals to oppose Brown's conviction.

In their morality, the transcendentalists did not abandon their practice of exchanging facts and the categories of common sense for ideas and the categories of imagination. Nor did they lose all awareness of common sense or all contact with facts. This combination of circumstances might have propelled them to dizzying heights of theorizing in an attempt to reconcile the two poles of their vision, as it often did in relation to their idealism. But on the whole, not counting the theoretical flights in which Emerson argued for a moral structure of the world, the transcendentalists were more down to earth about morality than they were about metaphysics. Not only did they tend to avoid too much theorizing, they took their practice a step further. Having seen and appreciated a vision of how things ought to be, they went to work to improve the relevant facts in light of their ideas. In a word, the transcendentalists were meliorists.

6. Beauty

If there is a single practice with which American transcendentalism can be identified, it is contemplation of beauty. Emerson responded to Plato's theory that beauty, truth, and goodness are one by saying that even so beauty is the best of the three. Children seem to see it radiating from the most ordinary objects to their exquisite delight. Adults sometimes find themselves feeling like children again in its presence. The transcendentalists thought of beauty as eternal, because a mere glimpse of it was enough to make them drop everything and simply take in what they heard or saw with neither motive nor intention. This activity satisfied them so deeply that while they were thus engaged it was as if time stood still.

Perhaps the most famous experience of beauty described by Emerson is the one in which he became a "transparent eyeball." Alone in the woods, "head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space", he found that he had vanished from his own experience. It was as if he consisted of nothing but impersonal vision, the object of which was "unconstrained and immortal beauty." Thoreau was equally susceptible to such enthralling experiences of beauty. Snow drifts, the shapes and colors of leaves, and the way light falls revealed to him so much beauty that he thought of them as imprints of the divine.

Of the three practices distinguished by Emerson, contemplation of beauty is perhaps the one that came most naturally to the transcendentalists. They were ready, like Socrates, for beauty to give them wings on which they could ascend to heaven and see reality from the standpoint of the gods. Facts, with all of their hard edges, quickly melted into images or ideas under beauty's divine influence. The contemplative absorptions this created were immensely satisfying, but they were also deceptive. Had the facts actually melted or did it merely seem as if they had?

Motivated by the tremendous appeal of the former hypothesis, Emerson attempted to extend the influence of beauty far beyond momentary absorptions. He reached the conclusion that everything is beautiful by arguing that beauty derives from purposiveness. Emerson thought of nature as a single, all-embracing system governed by immutable moral laws. In such a system, everything has a purpose in relation to the whole and is rendered beautiful by that relation. Marcus Aurelius proposed something similar in his Meditations. He said that even the foam at the mouths of ravening beasts takes on a certain beauty once its purpose is known.

The argument that purposiveness confers beauty is plausible when purposes are present and when they are at least arguably benevolent. A towering concrete dam may spoil the beauty of a river, until we understand that it was built to provide water to surrounding communities. Yet even though we see a benevolent purpose behind it, the ugliness of the dam may not be diminished. The argument is much weaker when applied to objects or events the purposes of which are evil, and it fails altogether in the case of realities that are non-purposive. Weapons of mass destruction are not rendered beautiful in light of their purpose. Earthquakes that strike major cities may occur for the sake of maintaining the structural equilibrium of the planet, but this adds little beauty to them. Moreover, nothing prevents us from understanding natural disasters as mechanical rather than purposive processes.

The transcendentalists were eminently capable of stretching their imaginations. When they exercised this capacity to the fullest, they saw around them an abstract world of interrelated ideas. The beauty of that world was so captivating that it tended to blind them to all external realities. Emerson went as far as to say there is a certain beauty in a corpse. We can hardly fault the transcendentalists for wishing to live always in the presence of the beautiful; yet the feats of imagination by which they conjured an ideal world could not be sustained forever. The transcendentalists were drawn to the beauty of ideas, but they knew they had to make their way in a world that also included stubborn facts. Once more we can see that it was not their practices, but their efforts to ground them in theories that created problems for the transcendentalists. Emerson's attempt to demonstrate that all things are beautiful made ugliness a little uglier and a little sadder. Even worse, it made it confounding. When a homely or a grotesque fact intruded into the beautiful world of his ideas, he loathed it all the more because he could not make sense of the intrusion.

7. Contemporary Relevance

Theories that attempt to establish the inner nature of the world will always be interesting and instructive. They capture the imagination and, if we care to see, show us the limits of what we know. The transcendentalists never produced a complete theory. Producing one that placed their values at the core of reality would have required them to set aside their interest in action and their instinctive loyalty to facts. Instead, they theorized spontaneously in an attempt to shore up the practices that brought them closer to the good. The bits and pieces of theory they devised are of continuing relevance not because they capture corresponding portions of ultimate reality but because they show us the extent to which human beings are capable of loving all that is good in the world.

Although the transcendentalists did not succeed in grounding their practices in a fully developed theory of absolute reality, they did not need to succeed in this. Appreciating the marvelous creativity of consciousness, affirming moral action, and contemplating beauty are self-standing practices. One might explain them and the values they uphold equally well through a variety of theories, and many philosophers have developed complete systems that assign to beauty, morality, or consciousness the status of the real. The transcendentalists sought to secure their practices to theoretical foundations, but their practices are independent of all attempts to develop a satisfactory account of them. They do not need the support of theories as an airplane does not need wires to hold it in the air. Not only that, but the effort to ground practices in theories is fraught with frustration, since there are many plausible theories, and those that one dislikes must constantly be defended against. The life-long devotion of the transcendentalists to their practices, even as their theories changed and vexed them anew, suggests they sensed their practices would and perhaps should stand on their own.

It is hard to overstate the value of the practices that form the heart of transcendentalism. We tend to lose sight of the sheer improbability of awareness and the wonder of its products. The rightness of moral action does not always impress us, and we often fail to see beauty in ordinary objects and events. The focus on improvement instilled in many of us from childhood bogs us down in facts that demand accounting and predicting. We grow increasingly blind to the realm of imagination and possibilities. Consider what the world would be like if we practiced transcendentalism all the time. We would view consciousness as a wonder that is without equal in the universe. A single moral action either performed or witnessed would be cause for feeling good. Perhaps best of all, we would not miss even the smallest particle of beauty. A pattern, a color, a sparkle seen out of the corner of the eye would lift us above all dreary facts to the heights of contemplative joy. None of this would establish the good or the beautiful or even the true in the inner sanctum of reality, but it would enrich the reality that is our experience, and that is what the transcendentalists sought above all.

8. References and Further Reading

Emerson, R. W. Emerson's Complete Works. 12 Vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1883-93.

Emerson, R. W. Emerson in His Journals. Joel Porte, Ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Gougeon, L. Virtue's Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

Gray, H. D. Emerson: A Statement of New England Transcendentalism as Expressed in the Philosophy of its Chief Exponent. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970.

McAleer, J. J. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984.

Packer, B. L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Richardson, R. D. Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Thoreau, H. D. The Best of Thoreau's Journals. Carl Bode, Ed. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971.

Thoreau, H. D. Walden. Michael Meyer, Ed. London: Macmillan, 1995.

Thoreau, H. D. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Carl Hovde, Ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Myerson, Joel, Ed. Transcendentalism: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Author Information

Michael Brodrick
Email: michael.brodrick@gmail.com
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
U. S. A.

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American transcendentalism is essentially a kind of practice by which the world of facts and the categories of common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the categories of imagination. The point of this exchange is to make life better by lifting us above the conflicts and struggles that weigh on our souls.

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Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Poetry Foundation

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A short documentary on the role of American Transcendentalism in modern society. Music by: Jesse Daniel Smith https://soundcloud.com/jessedanielsmith Busman's Holiday https://soundcloud.com/joyful-noise-recordings/busmans-holiday-baby-blue

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Because of his difficult childhood circumstances, Edgar Allan Poe was often alone during his youth. He wrote a poem, called \

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What is TRANSCENDENTALISM? What does TRANSCENDENTALISM mean? TRANSCENDENTALISM meaning

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"Oh could I raise the darken'd veil" - Oh could I raise the darken'd veil,

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts was an American short story writer and romance novelist who experimented with a broad range of styles and genres. He is best known for his short stories and two widely read novels: The Scarlet Letter (mid-March 1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). Along with Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe much of Hawthorne's work belongs to the sub-genre of Dark Romanticism, distinguished by an emphasis on human fallibility that gives rise to lapses in judgement that allow even good men and women to drift toward sin and self-destruction. Dark Romantics tends to draw attention to the unintended consequences and complications that arise from well-intended efforts at social reform. Melville dedicated his epic novel, Moby-Dick to Hawthorne: " In token of my admiration for his genius." Hawthorne's lesser-known poems exemplify Dark Romanticism; some of his darkest works, including his ghost stories and tales involving the supernatural, fall within the genre of Gothic Literature.

Young Hawthorne was a contemporary of fellow Transcendalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott, Hawthorne was part of this prominent circle of Massachusetts writers and philosophers. The Transcendentalists believed in the "inherent goodness of both people and nature." I would encourage you to think of them as intellectual hippies of the early 19th century (the movement sprang forth in the 1820s and 1830s). Hawthorne was a founding member of Brook Farm, a utopian experiment in communal living -- though he is not portrayed as a deep believer in its ideals. As Hawthorne matured, he drifted further and further from some of the transcendental principles. In fact, his later writing, produced after greater experience in the world, demonstrated an increasing disdain for the Transcendental Movement. He notably fictionalized the experiences of Brook Farm in his satirical novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).

I think it's important to mark Hawthorne's migration from a young Transcendental idealist to a Dark Romantic writer. At one level it's a remarkable journey because the older man comes to embrace the opposite inclinations of his youth; that rather then being inherently good, people were deeply fallible, prone to lapses in judgement and they difted easily to sin. Furthermore, some of their greatest sins were committed under the umbrella of good intentions. On another level, the journey is common-place, as almost all individuals discover that the journey of life tempers their youthful idealism. But there is also a personal history the weighed heavily on Hawthorne. He had two stern forefathers in his patrilineal heritage, his great-great-great grandfather and his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne. So he knew well that men could, cloaked in the countenance of goodness and piety, commit great sin. Here is Hawthorne describing them both (starting with the great-great-great grandfather):

He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanical traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust!

Hawthorne was acutely aware of his ancestors' sins, so ashamed that he was actually born "Hathorne" and added the "w" to hide his true lineage.

With knowledge of these biographical details, the reader can easily see the influence of his ancestors not only rise up in his drift into Dark Romanticism, but also in his writing, which was often set in colonial New England and heavily weighted with the moral complexity of his Puritan background (and perhaps the deeds of his ancestors in those communities). Which brings us to his most acclaimed work. The Scarlet Letter, a work rife with moral complexity.

The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced novels in America and became an instant best seller, selling over 2,500 copies in the first two weeks. It has been praised for its sentimentality and moral purity by the likes of D. H. Lawrence, who said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination.Though Edgar Allan Poe -- a fellow author in the Dark Romantic Movement and influential literary critic -- wrote negative reviews of Hawthorne's stories. Poe did not admire stories that were allegorical and moral in nature so his criticism was in form. Though even he begrudgingly acknowledged that Hawthorne's style "is like purity itself." Hawthorne's highest regarded short stories include My Kinsman, Major Molineaux (1832), Young Goodman Brown (1835), Feathertop (1852), and The Minister's Black Veil.

Now I am going to break from my biographical narrative to add a personal note. After a lifetime of reading, Nathaniel Hawthorne has emerged as one of my absolute favorite authors of all time. If you are not having fun while reading Hawthorne you are doing it wrong! For instance, My Kinsman, Major Molineaux is a comic short story and should be enjoyed as such (it does have a "tragic" ending). It's the story of a young "hayseed" on his first visit to the "big city" and he suffers the embarrassments one would expect and few extras thrown in for good measure. It could inspire a Monty Python skit. I think there is a secret to understanding and appreciating Hawthorne's body of work. And I will share that with you. But be warned; he is not a cheap date! You will have to work hard before you can truly love this writer.

The price of admission is that one must read and study over the introductory chapter to The Scarlet Letter, The Custom-House. Then read the Preface to the Second Edition and then -- sorry -- read The Custom-House again. As much as it will not feel like it at the time, if you are a high school student, and your English teacher has asked you to specifically read The Custom-House, it's because he or she loves you and cares about your education (which as Twain famously pointed out, should not be confused with your schooling). You will know that you truly understand those two introductory chapters when you realize the Nathaniel Hawthorne was a mid-1850s Bad Ass who explicitly, purposely, and repeatedly "stuck it to the man", even after, heck especially after they asked him to stop! I also do not think you can properly understand The Scarlet Letter without understanding The Custom-House (and also marking the sins of Hawthorne's forefathers). I assure you, the effort is worth the reward. [And I do offer belated apologies to my sophomore English teacher for my essay entitled, "Why I Hate English Class," which I tendered like a smart-aleck after my first bout with The Custom-House way back in 1981.]

For the record, Hawthorne died in his sleep in 1864 during a tour of the White Mountains in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was educated at one of my favorite small universities, Bowdoin College, where he was a student from 1821-1824.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts was an American short story writer and romance novelist who experimented with a broad range of styles and genres. He is best known for his short stories and two widely read novels: The Scarlet Letter (mid-March 1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851).

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"Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation

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We then walked west, only about 50 paces, to a competing site, now an Aldo shoe store, which bears a plaque that also claims to be the farmhouse's original location.

Seeking a less disputed link to the author, we headed north to Columbia University.

Inside Butler Library, surrounded by busts of writers and leather-bound encyclopedias, is a black fireplace mantel in front of which Poe wrote "The Raven." The mantel found its way to Columbia after a history buff paid $5 to haul it away before the farmhouse was demolished.

We imagine the author would be pleased with its location in the dim passageway. (The lighting was not intentional, we were told; just a few expired bulbs.)

We had heard that when Poe lived in a cottage, which still stands, in the Bronx, he visited the Jesuits at a nearby college, now part of Fordham University. He was fond of the order, he told an acquaintance, because they "smoked, drank and played cards like gentlemen, and never said a word about religion."

So we arranged a trip north.

Hidden from public view, in a vault inside the campus's Walsh Library, is Old Edgar Allan, the University Church's aging bell, thought to be the inspiration for Poe's poem " The Bells."

The librarians let us ring the metal object, turning green with age, to verify its authenticity. We must say, the sound was less "jingling" and "tinkling," and more deep-clanging.

This week, you can learn about Poe's history at the Bronx Library Center on Saturday, attend performances and readings of his work near his cottage in the Bronx the same day, or take a walking tour of his life in Greenwich Village on Sunday.

Here's what else is happening:

Weather

A day to make even make the most morose poet grin.

As far as winter days go, this one is tops: A bright sun, only a touch of wind, and a high of 51.

And this is just the beginning.

We're looking at a stretch of mild winter days (with some rain), at least through the weekend.

In the News

* New York's attorney general will give legal guidance to local governments today on how to buck a possible deportation push by President-elect Donald J. Trump. [ New York Times]

* Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said his main message during his meeting with Mr. Trump was that a loss of federal funds would hurt their home state. [ New York Times]

* Buskers say the police have been less than welcoming at the new Second Avenue subway stations. [ New York Times]

* A bullet's fatal detour in the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx: Maribel Cavero's death in 2016 puzzled detectives, but help from a witness led to the arrest of a man they believe to have fired a gun nearly two blocks away. [ New York Times]

* Bridges across the city will be outfitted with choreographed lights, Mr. Cuomo said. [ CBS]

* The governor also wants movie theaters in the state to sell beer and wine. [ Gothamist]

* One million users have signed up for LinkNYC's free Wi-Fi service since last year, the city said. [ DNAinfo]

* A hotel magnate and convicted tax evader who owned Studio 54 has been pardoned by President Obama. [ New York Times]

* A new poll shows Mayor Bill de Blasio beating all challengers to his re-election but one: Hillary Clinton. [ New York Times]

* Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said he had turned down jobs in the Trump administration because his wife didn't want to move to Washington. [ New York Magazine]

* Madame Tussauds unveiled its new wax sculpture of Mr. Trump. [ Pix 11]

* Joanna Acevedo had to quit boxing and postpone her dreams to care for her daughter, who was born with a rare condition affecting her eyesight. [ New York Times]

* Today's Metropolitan Diary: " MetroCard, Where Did You Go? "

* Scoreboard: Knicks lick Celtics, 117-106

* For a global look at what's happening, see Your Thursday Briefing.

Coming Up Today

* Mayor de Blasio, Alec Baldwin, the Rev. Al Sharpton and others will demonstrate in front of Trump International Hotel at 6 p.m.

* The New York Ceramics and Glass Fair begins at Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. [$20, tickets here]

* " Hollywood in the White House," a lecture about how our presidents have been portrayed on the big screen, at the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

* Learn about Truman Capote's legacy in film with a screening of "Murder by Death" and a discussion with local journalists at the Brooklyn Historical Society. 7 p.m. [Free]

* Geoffrey Cobb, the author of " The King of Greenpoint," discusses the book and the neighborhood's history, at the New York Irish Arts Center in Long Island City, Queens. 7 p.m. [Free]

* A staged reading of the movie " Heathers," at Littlefield in Gowanus, Brooklyn. 8 p.m. [$10]

* Islanders host Stars, 7 p.m. (MSG+). Rangers at Maple Leafs, 7:30 p.m. (MSG). Knicks host Wizards, 8 p.m. (TNT).

* For more events, see The New York Times's Arts & Entertainment guide.

Commute

J, Z, L and 7 trains are running with delays.

* Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

* Alternate-side parking: in effect until Jan. 28.

* Ferries: Staten Island Ferry, New York Waterway, East River Ferry

And Finally...

Donald J. Trump is set to become the 45th president on Friday, but New Yorkers still can't get enough of his former opponent Hillary Clinton.

During recent outings in the city, Mrs. Clinton has been met with hugs, applause and adoration from a crush of fans.

But for those supporters who haven't yet been able to snap a coveted Clinton selfie, may we suggest another souvenir: a taste of one of Mrs. Clinton's signature cookies.

A gallery on the Lower East Side is offering the baked goods, displayed in a giant cookie jar in the shape of a pantsuit.

The work, by the artist Jennifer Rubell, explores the "complicated relationship between feminism and femininity" and sprang from a remark Mrs. Clinton made in 1992 about not wanting to "stay home and bake cookies."

A brouhaha ensued when Mrs. Clinton made the comment during her husband's first presidential campaign, and the magazine Family Circle responded by sponsoring a bake-off between her and the first lady at the time, Barbara Bush.

The winning recipe: Mrs. Clinton's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

You can sample the treats (baked by the artist) and other works at the solo exhibition " Housewife," at Sargent's Daughters through Feb. 26.
New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email. For updates throughout the day, like us on Facebook. What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday. Follow the New York Today columnists, Alexandra Levine and Jonathan Wolfe, on Twitter. You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

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New York Today: A Bird's Eye View of Poe

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We then walked west, only about 50 paces, to a competing site, now an Aldo shoe store, which bears a plaque that also claims to be the farmhouse's original location. Seeking a less disputed link to the author, we headed north to Columbia University.

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By Ralph Waldo Emerson

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ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? / In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, / I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, / Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, / To

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American National Biography Online: Poe, Edgar Allan

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The Time, Life and Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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http://www.zaneeducation.com - The Time, Life and Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne - a History of American Literature Title Learn about and understand the important literary contributions made by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the reclusive American Renaissance author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.

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A Plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau

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A Plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau

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http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/thoreau_001.asp

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Dark Romanticism is a genre steeped in complex emotions and expressions of individualism. We hope this guide is particularly useful for students and teachers.
Overview of Dark Romanticism, Exemplary Works, Etymology & Historical Context, Quotes, Discussion Questions, Useful Links, and Notes/Teacher Comments

First, let's deal with the meaning of Romanticism. It values beliefs and emotions as more important than logic or facts. The individual comes first, and often involves the worship of nature (or a whale?). Dark Romanticism is distinguished from Romanticism in its emphasis on human fallibility and sin (they are pessimists), whereas Romantics believe in human goodness (they are optimists). According to Dark Romantics, even good men and women drift towards sin and self-destruction, and there can be unintended consequences that arise from well-intended social reforms.

The genre of "Dark Romanticism" is thought to have emerged from the Transcendental Movement in 19th century America. Whereas Transcendentalists felt perfection and their own divinity as innate qualities of mankind (they thiought utopian communes would work), Dark Romantics believed humans gravitate to evil and self-destruction (striving for a utopian society is a waste of time). Stories in this genre share many characteristics of Realism (tell it like it is, what can go wrong, will). Dark Romantics focus on human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement, punishment, as well as the psychological effects of guilt and sin. Authors who embrace this genre include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. There's an even darker side of the Dark Romantics: Gothic Literature, which involves sheer terror, personal torment, graphic morbidity, and the supernatural.

Here's a helpful overview of the characteristics, origin, and exemplar authors to help you better understand Dark Romanticism. You might also enjoy H.L. Mencken's analysis of New Puritanism, Puritanism As a Literary Force.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville is one of the most recognized novels in the genre of Dark Romanticism. Melville's Captain Ahab is the prototype of human fallibility, and he draws upon amble Biblical allusions (including his character names) centering on themes of judgement, guilt, sin, souls, and the end of the world. See Moby-Dick - Study Guide

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne exemplifies Dark Romanticism in its themes of imposed judgement and punishment for those who commit sin, resulting in alienation and self-destruction. Hawthorne's most famous novel examined the human soul and our morality-- certainly a cautionary tale about the dangers of well-intended social reform and blind religious fervor. While Hawthorne dappled in numerous genres, including Transcendentalism, he found his niche in Dark Romanticism, albeit on the less pessimistic side. He believed that for all of our weaknesses, hypocrisy and suffering, "the truth of the human heart" usually prevails. Another exemplary work of Dark Romanticism is his story, Young Goodman Brown.

Practically all of Edgar Allan Poe's canon falls in the Dark Romantic genre, in which he explored the psychology of the conscious and subconscious mind. A Descent Into the Maelstrom is a fine example. Many of Poe's works are on the dark end of the Dark Romantic spectrum, into the realm of Gothic Fiction with macabre tales of horror, morbidity, and madness. Fine example: The Fall of the House of Usher, which deals with mental conditions such as hypochondria and hyperethesia (sensory overload). Poe was also credited as the creator of the detective fiction genre, as in his story, The Purloined Letter. Poe literally provided a template for detective authors to follow, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A fun fact about Poe: he really disliked Transcendentalists, referring to them as "Frogpondians" (after the pool in Boston Commons).

Emily Dickinson challenged the definitions of poetry and exemplify Dark Romanticism. It's well-known that she led an increasingly reclusive life, afflicted by severe depression, and never saw success during her lifetime (she died at 56). Yet, her creative energy, willingness to fight conventions (no titles, short lines), and prolific writing (she published nearly 1,800 poems in her lifetime) established her literary prowess and blazed a trail for other poets and women writers to follow.

The etymology of the word "Romanticism" is from the Latin word "romant" which means "in the Roman manner." It became known as a style of art, literature, and music that drew on emotions, intuition, and imagination, rather than rationality and science. While the Romantic Movement began in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, it migrated to America in the early 19th century.

American Romanticism authors were most prolific between 1830-1865. Within the genre of Romanticism, two opposing sub-genres emerged: the optimists who believed in human goodness and spirituality, grew in to the Transcendentalism Movement; the pessimists, who embraced human fallibility and our predisposition towards sin, grew into the Dark Romantic Movement. The Dark Romantics were drawn to the dark side of the human psyche, the evil side of spiritual truth. The Dark Romantics rebelled against the Puritans, who came to the country to escape persecution, but imposed their own religion and societal rules (government) on others, judging those who did not conform. These authors were drawn to human's imperfections, self-destruction, sin, and the hazards of social reform. Authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote extensively about persecution of minorities in America, as in The Scarlet Letter, and The Maypole of Merry Mount.

It is helpful to understand the historical backdrop for the emergence of the Dark Romantics and the Transcendentalists. America had established itself as an independent nation, and was struggling with the morality of slavery, social reforms, and the rights of the minority. Abraham Lincoln rose to power leading the country with a truly distinctive American voice-- eloquent, yet simple and coarse language embracing the country's failures, triumph, and tragedy. His fallibility was very much in-line with the Dark Romantic authors who published their major works shortly before the American Civil War and its messy aftermath into the Reconstruction era. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, the same year Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was published a year later.

The Transcendentalists were busy at this same time in history: Thoreau's was published in 1854, Whitman's Leaves of Grass a year later (1855). In 1865, the Civil War ended, Lincoln was assassinated, slavery was abolished. The country was no longer naive, more cynical, and a lot wiser than it had been a half century earlier, an ambivalence-- balancing pessimism and optimism-- that was reflected in the works of so many of the period's authors. Visit American History in Literature

Here is an excellent summary of Important Events during the Romantic Period (1825-1910), which encompasses an interesting musical history as well.

Explain what the following quotes meaning and why they are exemplars of Dark Romanticism:

"Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate de fois gras." -- Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

"The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds-the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

"Such was the effect of this simple piece of crepe, that more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meetinghouse. Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them...A subtle power was breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil

"An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why." -- Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

 Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. --Edgar Allan Poe's A Dream Within A Dream

"I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white--whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words--and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture." -- Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum

 Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. --Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death

 As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here. --Emily Dickinson's I Felt a Funeral in My Brain

"No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection."
"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!" -- Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

1. Identify the characteristics of Dark Romanticism as expressed in works by American authors.

2. Explain the difference between "Romanticism" and "Dark Romanticism."

3. How does Gothic Literature differ from "Dark Romanticism"?

4. Nathaniel Hawthorne began his writing career considered a Romantic author, then moved towards Transcendentalism, before rejecting it in favor of the genre of his greatest success: "Dark Romanticism." Find an example of his work from each of these genres and discuss their contrasting styles.

5. Discuss the treatment of morality and social conventions (peer pressure) in this genre. Feel free to draw from The Scarlet Letter.

6. Identify a modern author whom you think fits the Dark Romanticism genre (e.g., Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Joyce Carol Oates). Provide evidence to support your choice, providing examples from their work.

7. Discuss Emily Dickinson's seemingly contradictory voices as a poet? Select at least two poems, identify elements of depression/hope, resilience/morbidity, and love/loss.

8. Why are readers drawn to stories about human fallibility? Discuss how Dark Romantic authors appealed to their readers.

9. In Hawthorne's The Birthmark: Georgiana tells her husband, "You cannot love what shocks you!" What is your opinion? Is it the imperfections we all possess that attracts us, or are these the attributes that repel us in disgust? Explain the message in this story.

10. Explain the meaning of this quote from Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (chapter 87) in the context of Dark Romanticism:
"for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."

11. In Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil, what does Reverend Hooper's veil symbolize and why does he wear it?

We need to hear from you! Please share your lesson plans, questions, or pitfalls to avoid while teaching this genre in pursuing our common interests of helping more students enjoy reading classic literature! Contact us via Facebook or Twitter

Visit our Teacher Resources, supporting literacy instruction across all grade levels
American Literature's Study Guides Return to American Literature Home Page

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exemplars of dark romanticism in literature

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compare dark romanticism to transcendentalism

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dark romanticism compared to gothic literature

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Teach the genre of Dark Romanticism, with ideas from this resource guide, including an overview of the concept, exemplary works, authors, etymology and historical context, useful links, and teacher notes. Our goal is to help you help your students to better understand AND ENJOY classic literature!

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This video is about Transcendentalism Vs Dark Romanticism

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Watch a short video about Edgar Allan Poe to find out how the tragic losses in his life may have contributed to his transformation into one of the most popular

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These Best Romanticism poems are the top Romanticism poems on PoetrySoup. These are examples of the best romanticism poems written by PoetrySoup members

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An Analysis on A Plea for Captain John Brown

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An Analysis on A Plea for Captain John Brown

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https://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-analysis-of-a-plea-for-captain-john-brown-an-essay-by-henry-david-thoreau-KqO0i997

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Video SparkNotes: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter summary

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Follow the link and click the video

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Brief Overview of the Movement

Transcendentalism is a philosophical and social movement that began around 1836, in New England. However, before we delve into defining and comprehending this movement, it's necessary for one to understand why it was developed. It was created as a rebellious reaction to the previous Age of Reason, and its rationalist way of thinking. The original members of the movement also believed society and its organized institutions (for example, religion and politics) were corrupting the purity of individuals. The movement was created based on ideas from a variety of sources, including Hindu texts, various other religious ideas, and German idealism.

Transcendentalism, as a whole, centered on the writings and teachings of American author Ralph Waldo Emerson; it especially focused on his piece entitled, Self-Reliance. Transcendentalists were some of the first known non-conformists in America, and thus they critiqued contemporary society for its unthinking conformity. Through his writing, Emerson urged everyone to find his own 'original relation to the universe.' Now that we have a better idea why this movement was created, let's move on and focus on its core, essential values.

Transcendentalist Values

Transcendentalists believed in numerous values, however they can all be condensed into three basic, essential values: individualism, idealism, and the divinity of nature.

Individualism

As we discussed briefly earlier, transcendentalist followers alleged that organized institutions in society, like religion and politics, negatively tainted individuals' innocence. At the same time, they believed that individuals are at their best when they are entirely independent and 'self-reliant,' hence Emerson's essay of the same name. The notion of thinking for oneself without following the rules set forth by a society is one of the fundamental tenets of transcendentalism. This concept inspires one to have his own free thoughts, based on his own values, rather than the values of others.

As you can probably imagine, during the early 19th Century when this movement was first created, its members were not well-received, or even liked, by many others. However, rather than feeling defeated, true transcendentalists remained true to their movement's new values and continued to advocate for their unpopular, nonconformist ideas. Because of this, many members of society, or the conformists, feared transcendentalists and assumed them to be out to wreak havoc on society. These people were mistaken though, because the true purpose of becoming an individual, according to transcendentalist belief, is to promote the peace and harmony of becoming oneself. One of Emerson's famous aphorisms helps clarify this belief: 'conformity is the death of individualism.'

Idealism

The second key value of the transcendentalist movement is that of idealism. This value is a little more self-explanatory. Between the Age of Reason and Transcendentalism was the Romanticism movement; similarly to the British Romantics, this movement focused on the use of creativity and imagination, something the Age of Reason obviously greatly strayed from. The focus of idealism in the transcendentalist way of thinking sought to continue to utilize the innovative, imaginative ideas from the previous Romantic Movement. The members of the transcendentalist movement hoped to break away from the strict confines of the Age of Reason, and bring society into a more ideal, enjoyable environment.

Divinity of Nature

The final essential transcendental value is the belief in the divinity of nature. Transcendentalists did not believe in organized religion, but they were very spiritual people. Remember how we said some of their original doctrines were based on the works of spiritual advisors and Hindu teachings? They believed that nature is sacred, and that it is imperative for individuals to connect with nature.

Transcendentalists were lovers of nature, and did not think it was something that could be controlled by anyone. Instead, they believed that the only thing people can control is what is in their own minds (remember their focus on individualism?). According to transcendentalists, if one senses a strong connection to nature, then he will be able to understand his oversoul and, in effect, be able to live a successful, complete life, free from any constraints placed upon him by conforming to society. The term oversoul is a transcendentalist term, which explains that everything is connected and thus happens for a reason; therefore, transcendentalists also believe that, since nature is divine, we must not interfere with it and leave it be as God intended.

Passage Analysis

Now that we have read and understood the three quintessential components of the transcendentalist movement, let's read and analyze a brief passage for its incorporation of these values. This is paragraph two of Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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the american transcendentalists: values & explanation - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The American Transcendentalists: Values & Explanation - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Transcendentalism is a philosophical and social movement that began around 1836, in New England. However, before we delve into defining and comprehending this movement, it's necessary for one to understand why it was developed. It was created as a rebellious reaction to the previous Age of Reason, and its rationalist way of thinking.

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Archives of the Transcendentalist magazine, The Dial that ran from 1840-1929

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presents serial archive listings for

The Dial was an American magazine of literature, philosophy, and politics, published during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Publication History

The Dial was established in 1840 as a Transcendentalist magazine, edited by Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It published four volumes in this incarnation, ceasing in 1844. The Dial was revived in 1880, and carried a mix of politics, literature, and criticism under various editors, including Marianne Moore in the late 1920s. No issue copyright renewals are in force for this magazine, but contributions were renewed from before 1923. The Dial ceased publication in 1929.

Persistent Archives of Complete Issues

1840-1841: Google Books has Volume I of the 1840 incarnation, covering July 1840-April 1841.

1841-1842: Google Books has Volume II of the 1840 incarnation, covering July 1841-April 1842.

1842-1843: Google Books has Volume III of the 1840 incarnation, covering July 1842-April 1843.

1843-1844: Google Books has Volume IV of the 1840 incarnation, covering July 1843-April 1844.

1880-1922: HathiTrust has volumes 1-73 of the 1880 incarnation. Some later volumes are searchable but not readable online.

1880-1881: Michigan MBooks has Volume 1 of the 1880 incarnation, covering May 1880-April 1881.

1881-1882: Michigan MBooks has Volume 2 of the 1880 incarnation, covering May 1881-April 1882.

1882-1883: Michigan MBooks has Volume 3 of the 1880 incarnation, covering May 1882-April 1883.

1883-1884: Michigan MBooks has Volume 4 of the 1880 incarnation, covering May 1883-April 1884.

1884-1885: Michigan MBooks has Volume 5, covering May 1884-April 1885.

1885-1886: Michigan MBooks has Volume 6, covering May 1885-April 1886.

1886-1887: Michigan MBooks has Volume 7, covering May 1886-April 1887.

1887-1888: Michigan MBooks has Volume 8, covering May 1887-April 1888.

1888-1889: Michigan MBooks has Volume 9, covering May 1888-April 1889.

1889-1890: Michigan MBooks has Volume 10, covering May 1889-April 1890.

1892: Google Books has Volume 13, covering May-December 1892. Access may be restricted outside the US.

1893: Google Books has Volume 14, covering January-June 1893. Access may be restricted outside the US.

1893: The Internet Archive has Volume 15, covering July-December 1893.

1894: The Internet Archive has Volume 16, covering January-June 1894.

1894: The Internet Archive has Volume 17, covering July-December 1894.

1895: The Internet Archive has Volume 18, covering January-June 1895.

1895: The Internet Archive has Volume 19, covering July-December 1895.

1896: The Internet Archive has Volume 20, covering January-June 1896.

1896: The Internet Archive has Volume 21, covering July-December 1896.

1897: The Internet Archive has Volume 22, covering January-June 1897.

1897: The Internet Archive has Volume 23, covering July-December 1897.

1898: The Internet Archive has Volume 24, covering January-June 1898.

1898: The Internet Archive has Volume 25, covering July-December 1898.

1899: The Internet Archive has Volume 26, covering January-June 1899.

1899: The Internet Archive has Volume 27, covering July-December 1899.

1900: The Internet Archive has Volume 28, covering January-June 1900.

1900: The Internet Archive has Volume 29, covering July-December 1900.

1901: The Internet Archive has Volume 30, covering January-June 1901.

1901: The Internet Archive has Volume 31, covering July-December 1901.

1902: The Internet Archive has Volume 32, covering January-June 1902.

1902: The Internet Archive has Volume 33, covering July-December 1902.

1903: The Internet Archive has Volume 34, covering January-June 1903.

1903: The Internet Archive has Volume 35, covering July-December 1903.

1904: The Internet Archive has Volume 36, covering January-June 1904.

1904: The Internet Archive has Volume 37, covering July-December 1904.

1905: The Internet Archive has Volume 38, covering January-June 1905.

1905: The Internet Archive has Volume 39, covering July-December 1905.

1906: The Internet Archive has Volume 40, covering January-June 1906.

1906: The Internet Archive has Volume 41, covering July-December 1906.

1907: The Internet Archive has Volume 42, covering January-June 1907.

1907: The Internet Archive has Volume 43, covering July-December 1907.

1908: The Internet Archive has Volume 44, covering January-June 1908.

1908: The Internet Archive has Volume 45, covering July-December 1908.

1909: The Internet Archive has Volume 46, covering January-June 1909.

1909: The Internet Archive has Volume 47, covering July-December 1909.

1910: The Internet Archive has Volume 48, covering January-June 1910.

1910: The Internet Archive has Volume 49, covering July-December 1910.

1911: The Internet Archive has Volume 50, covering January-June 1911.

1911: The Internet Archive has Volume 51, covering July-December 1911.

1912: The Internet Archive has Volume 52, covering January-June 1912.

1913: The Internet Archive has Volume 53, covering July-December 1912.

1913: The Internet Archive has Volume 54, covering January-June 1913.

1914: The Internet Archive has Volume 55, covering July-December 1913.

1914: The Internet Archive has Volume 56, covering January-June 1914.

1914: The Internet Archive has Volume 57, covering July-December 1914.

1915: The Internet Archive has Volume 58, covering January-June 10, 1915.

1915: The Internet Archive has Volume 59, covering June 24-December 1915.

1916: The Internet Archive has Volume 60, covering January-June 8, 1916.

1916: The Internet Archive has Volume 61, covering June 22-December 1916.

1917: The Internet Archive has Volume 62, covering January-June 14, 1917.

1917: The Internet Archive has Volume 63, covering June 28-December 1917.

1918: The Internet Archive has Volume 64, covering January-June 6, 1918.

1918: The Internet Archive has Volume 65, covering June 20-December 1918.

1919: The Internet Archive has Volume 66, covering January-June 1919.

1919: The Internet Archive has volume 67, covering July-December 1919.

1920: Google Books has volume 68, covering January-June 1920. Access may be restricted outside the United States.

1920: Google Books has volume 69, covering July-December 1920. Access may be restricted outside the United States.

1920: Google Books has volume 70, covering January-June 1921. A page appears to be missing from the start.

1921: Michigan MBooks has Volume 71, covering July-December 1921.

1922: Michigan MBooks has Volume 72, covering January-June 1922.

1922: Michigan MBooks has Volume 73, covering July-December 1922.

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presents serial archive listings for The Dial was an American magazine of literature, philosophy, and politics, published during the 19th and 20th centuries. The Dial was established in 1840 as a Transcendentalist magazine, edited by Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It published four volumes in this incarnation, ceasing in 1844.

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How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!

I.

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held - as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light - such for his spirit was fit -
And yet that spirit knew - not in the hour
Of its own fervour - what had o'er it power.

II.

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told - or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
As dew of the night time, o'er the summer grass?

III.

Doth o'er us pass, when as th' expanding eye
To the loved object - so the tear to the lid
Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
And yet it need not be - (that object) hid
From us in life - but common - which doth lie
Each hour before us - but then only bid
With a strange sound, as of a harpstring broken
T' awake us - 'Tis a symbol and a token -

IV.

Of what in other worlds shall be - and given
In beauty by our God, to those alone
Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
Though not with Faith - with godliness - whose throne
With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

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In Youth I Have Known One Poem by Edgar Allan Poe - Poem Hunter

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How often we forget all time, when lone Admiring Nature's universal throne; Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! I.

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william ellery channing (1818-1901). nature. george willis cooke

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comp. 1903. the poets of transcendentalism: an anthology

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William Ellery Channing (1818-1901). Nature. George Willis Cooke, comp. 1903. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology

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William Ellery Channing (1818-1901). Nature. George Willis Cooke, comp. 1903. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology

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Inspired by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, " Extraordinary Tales " strings five animated short films into a curiosity of torture, murder, pestilence and madness. Harnessing a range of appropriately spooky-oddball narrators and striking visual styles - including graphic novels, early photography and Expressionist painting - the Spanish director and animator Raul Garcia simultaneously honors and reimagines.

Compressed to its horrific essence, each tale illustrates the movie's rather obvious framing device: A graveyard conversation between Poe, in the guise of a raven, and Death, whom he fears and obsesses over. As the author frets about the robustness of his legacy, the segments emphasize the many ways terror of the hereafter can manifest.

Two have a decaying beauty that's particularly evocative. In "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," a doctor hypnotizes a dying man while mauve, yellow and mossy green comic-book panels prove that you don't need fancy technology to achieve a third dimension. And in "The Masque of the Red Death," the rosy wash of oily color that flows over the story's plague-stalked revelers gives them the appearance of having been dipped in blood.

But whether it's the dignified tones of Christopher Lee, in his final film role (he died in June), leading us through the mental and dynastic decline of "The Fall of the House of Usher," or the sepulchral voice of Bela Lugosi reciting "The Tell-Tale Heart" - potently rendered in the style of the comic-book artist Alberto Breccia - the best sections reverberate with the power of Poe's words. As such, they serve as apt tributes to yarns that will always be more formidable on the page than on the screen.

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Review: 'Extraordinary Tales,' Short Films Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

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Inspired by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, " Extraordinary Tales " strings five animated short films into a curiosity of torture, murder, pestilence and madness. Harnessing a range of appropriately spooky-oddball narrators and striking visual styles - including graphic novels, early photography and Expressionist painting - the Spanish director and animator Raul Garcia simultaneously honors and reimagines.

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The Fall of the House of Usher: Animated short film

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The Fall of the House of Usher: Animated short film

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Shorter adaptation from the short story by Edgar Allen Poe

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'Annabel Lee' - Edgar Allan Poe || Gothic Poetry Narration

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Hear "The Tell-Tale Heart" read aloud.
The Tell-Tale Heart

True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded - with what caution - with what foresight - with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it - oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly - very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! - would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously - oh, so cautiously - cautiously (for the hinges creaked) - I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights - every night just at midnight - but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers - of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back - but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out - "Who's there?"

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; - just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief - oh, no! - it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself - "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney - it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel - although he neither saw nor heard - to feel the presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little - a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it - you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily - until, at length a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.

It was open - wide, wide open - and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness - all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? - now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! - do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me - the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once - once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye - not even his - could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out - no stain of any kind - no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all - ha! ha!

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o 'clock - still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, - for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled, - for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search - search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: - it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness - until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale; - but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased - and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath - and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly - more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men - but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed - I raved - I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder - louder - louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! - no, no! They heard! - they suspected! - they knew! - they were making a mockery of my horror! - this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! - and now - again! - hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! -

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! - here, here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart!"
Edgar Allan Poe January 1843 Illustration by Harry Clarke

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Hear "The Tell-Tale Heart" read aloud. True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

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http://www.online-literature.com/periods/transcendentalism.php

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An intro to Dark Romanticism. Music by Danny Elfman from the Sleepy Hollow OST. Title: Sweet dreams.

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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

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https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_fall_of_the_house_of_usher.pdf

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Fittingly, Edgar Allan Poe's death was a mysterious one. The haunting author, the first American to try to make his living solely as a writer, was found disoriented, ranting and ragged on the streets of Baltimore on an autumn day in 1849. Nobody could tell what had put him in such a state at age 40, and he was taken to a hospital where he died a few days later. Was his puzzling death the result of drunkenness or rabies or murder? No one still knows for sure. Muddling matters even further was that Poe's enemy, the editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold, somehow became the executor of his estate and did his best to sully the writer's reputation, suggesting his end resulted from a dissolute lifestyle.

A January 20, 1907 New York Times article promised to make sense of the puzzle nearly six decades after the Poe's tragic demise, asserting that scientific breakthroughs had made it possible to understand what killed the poet and short-story writer. The paper called on one of the finest alienists of the era to undertake the mission, though great clarity didn't exactly result from the enterprise. The opening of " Edgar Allan Poe's Tragic Death Explained ":

Edgar Allan Poe, the author of "The Raven," "The Gold Bug," and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue"-to name merely the most popular of his works-the writer whose power startled Dickens and excited the admiration of Irving, Lowell, and Browning, and whom Tennyson called "the most original genius that America has produced," was found in the streets of Baltimore on Oct. 3, 1847 [sic], dazed, in rags, a physical and mental wreck. He lay for days unconscious or raving like a madman, then sank to death. His condition was ascribed to a debauch or drugs, or both, his pitiful end to mania-a-potu.

In his lifetime and since his death, Poe's personal habits and the circumstance of his end have been the topics of endless discussion, in which vituperation has been mingled with vehement defense. He has been pictured as a transcendent genius and a drunkard, a polished gentleman and a surly misanthrope.

Within the last few weeks, the whole topic has been reopened by the approaching dedication of a monument to Poe in Richmond, Va. To the existing mass of contradictory testimony and discussion has been added much new material on the subject. Some of this, including letters, accounts of personal experiences, and the first article dealing with Poe's case purely from the medical standpoint, has been published very recently. Taken as a whole, however, the evidence leaves the layman as much puzzled as ever regarding Poe's complex personality and the circumstances of his death.

To arrive at the truth of the matter and to clear Poe's name of injustice, if such existed, the New York Times has gathered all the evidence relating to the subject, particularly the letters and accounts recently printed, and submitted them to an alienist who ranks high as an authority on such matters in this city, and a physician whose practice particularly fits him to deal with the subject. This specialist undertook to review all of this evidence and to draw therefrom his conclusions regarding Poe as a man and his fatal malady.

The expert offered a surprising opinion. It contradicts the contention that Poe died of mania-a-potu. His death is traced to cerebral oedema, or "water on the brain" or "wet brain," a disease unknown in the author's day, but now well recognized with the advance of medical science. The more recent theories that Poe suffered from psychic epilepsy or paresis are discounted. Moreover the physician's study of the case has resulted in the belief that the psychopathic phases of Poe's case were so unusual that his mental responsibility is to be seriously questioned. His opinion follows:

"In reviewing the case of a man of undoubted genius, like Edgar Allan Poe, we must remember that Nature, while developing certain brain centres to an unusual degree, has neglected other mental attributes, so that they are far below those found in the average man. Thus Poe's powers of imagination were abnormal at the expense of his will power, his ability to resist temptation, and his recuperation in case of misfortune. Such facts do not apply to men of exceptional abilities like Washington-abilities often confounded with genius-but to men of very exceptional gifts in only one direction. Lord Byron furnished an example of this condition. Its presence marked Poe as a weak man. His inherited characteristics were bad. His nervous system was constitutionally deranged; he was abnormal to a degree that leads one to seriously doubt his mental or moral responsibility. Add to these elements his reckless youth, the ease with which he was surrounded early in his life, and the years of poverty and misfortune which followed, and his tragic end is already foreshadowed."*

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Old Print Article: Edgar Allan Poe's Mysterious Death Reexamined (1907)

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Fittingly, Edgar Allan Poe's death was a mysterious one. The haunting author, the first American to try to make his living solely as a writer, was found disoriented, ranting and ragged on the streets of Baltimore on an autumn day in 1849.

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Watch a short video biography about Edgar Allan Poe's life and work, including his early life, his macabre short stories, his poem "The Raven," and his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849. Watch Edgar Allan Poe Video http://bit.ly/PHII4V Read more about Edgar Allan Poe http://bit.ly/OgJfxW Watch more Famous Author Biography Videos http://bit.ly/S9Nd6t Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" is one of the most famous poems ever written.

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An artistic movement of the late 1700s, Romanticism led poets such as Edgar Allan Poe to revere originality, free thinking, idealism, the supernatural and mystic, beauty, love, passion and the ...

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Period 2 Honors L.A. Final Project (Romanticism)

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Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/youtube/ -- Create animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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What is DARK ROMANTICISM? What does DARK ROMANTICISM mean? DARK ROMANTICISM meaning

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History on Romanticism

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My favorite version EVER!!

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The Simpsons - Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven

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Emerson (The Godfather of Transcendentalism)

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Emerson (The Godfather of Transcendentalism)

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The Romantic Period in American Literature and Art