Transcendental realism: Natural environment and social reform from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Mary Wilkins Freeman (William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller)

The main goal of this project is to establish the legacy of American transcendentalism by way of thematic connections between Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, the major figures of what Lawrence Buell calls the “first wave,” and William Dean Howells, (Benjamin) Frank Norris, and Mary Wilkins Freeman, representative writers from a later period of history and literature.; By drawing on both primary texts and critical works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and by reviewing and incorporating strengths from various types of literary criticism, this dissertation proposes a working definition of a “transcendental ethos” characterized by several recurring topics of discussion. Specifically, this project characterizes and traces the power of the “transcendental ethos” in post-Civil War American literature and thought by extending and/or responding to arguments by scholars such as Everett Carter, Charles Child Walcutt, Roger Asselineau, and Lawrence Buell. It reveals that the represented writers from both before and after the Civil War grapple with (1) truth and accuracy of vision; (2) the use of literature to reform society; (3) the promotion of the individual and of self-culture; (4) inspiration and the interpretation of intuited divinity; (5) the exploration and exaltation of the beauty of the real and commonplace; and (6) the constant study of one's corresponding relationship to nature and the environment. This discussion also considers the ways that the later authors' perspectives and conclusions about the above resemble or resist the earlier writers' thoughts on the themes inherent to the “transcendental ethos.”; In short, “transcendental realism” may be thought of as a subset or vein of realism that can, but does not have to, encompass works that might have historically been discussed as realist, naturalist, or regionalist. “Transcendental realism” combines and crosses current modes of literary categorization in order to provide the reader with new ways of thinking about writers and ideas across regions, time periods, and previous definitions of literary movements. It argues that Howells, Norris, and Freeman were members of a second “wave” of transcendental thought who shared the first generation of transcendentalists' preoccupations with several specific and intriguing issues.