American Intellectual

University of Sarajevo
Faculty of Philosophy
English Department
American Transcendentalism

Essay
Duties of an American Intellectual in Emerson

STUDENT:
Midhat Å alji?
October, 2012

Transcendentalism is a movement in philosophy and literature from the 19th century America. This movement had the goal to shift the state of mind of the Americans, to reject Lockean empiricism while believe that every mans mortal is also the soul of the world. Sources of this movement came from various places; we can see the influence of German philosophy, Eastern philosophy, Unitarianism, the Romantic movement, etc. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882) is an American writer from the Transcendentalist period. His region to American literature is significant and his take configurations were a great influence to his contemporaries and to writers who came after him. He defined the American movement and wrote dallys which have great philosophical value. He changed the course of American culture and literature, not leading it towards European models.
Emerson started to write a journal, a prop which purpose was changed slightly, and plant his first literary attempts in it. His first work, Nature, was published in 1836 and it was a literary and philosophical manifesto.



In this work Emerson gave a significant role to the Nature and to the divinity. He introduced the belief of symbolic images; he believed that human moods can be, in literature, verbalized by their equivalent taken from nature.
Duties of an American Intellectual were enlisted in Emersons works; one work which will be analyzed through this essay is Nature.

Before publishing his work Nature, Emerson was visiting Europe. In 1833, he returned from Europe and started to shape the form of his work. At the end, his work consisted of an introductory part and eight chapters (Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, biography and Prospects).
The introductory part deals with the past and present;...If you want to keep a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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