Emerson's Thought And The Development Of American Literature

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great thinker, essayist and poet in the American literary history. He was a representative of the American Romanticism in the mid-19th century and an outstanding leader of the transcendental movement. Emerson's thought is mainly embodied in his major works: Nature, The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address, Self-Reliance and The Over-Soul. Emerson was great to confluence ideas of classics works and formed his own philosophy. Actually his philosophy, his religious and cultural thoughts were deeply influenced by European Romanticism and Kant's thought. The core of his thinking is"self-reliance"or"independence"—that is cultural national independence for the United States, literarily individual independence for writers and religious independence from the church. As far as literature is concerned, in a broad sense, Emerson placed his emphasis on nationalism rather than colonialism, advocating the American literature: typical American content and American style. In a narrow sense, Emerson laid his stress on the individual instead of the group. He asserted that there was a greatness in everybody that needed only to be set free, so every American writer should trust himself, respect himself and write according to his own principles and in his own peculiar way.Emerson's ideas and the transcendental movement exerted a great influence on the American intellectual world of his time and brought an unprecedented prosperity to it. Emerson's influence on American literature led American Romanticism to a new phase, the phase of New England transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism. In terms of American literature, Emerson's transcendentalism not only enriched the content and theme in American writing but also made a breakthrough in...