美国超验主义英语介绍
英语故事-Henry David Thoreau
英语故事Henry David Thoreau亨利·戴维·梭罗，美国作家、哲学家，超验主义代表人物，也是一位废奴主义及自然主义者，有无政府主义倾向，曾任职土地勘测员。
Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, civil disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and “Yankee”loves of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life’s true essential needs. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther king, Jr. Thoreau is sometimes cited as anindividualist anarchist. though civil disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government –“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”–the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: “‘that government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”Early life and educationHe was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in jersey. His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard’s 1766 student “Butter rebellion”, the first recorded student protest in the colonies. David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become “Henry David” until after college, althoughhe never petitioned to make a legal name change. He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia. Thoreau’s birthplace still exists on Virginia road in concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.Portrait of Thoreau from 1854amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau’s aunt each wrote that “Thoreau”is pronounced like the word “thorough”, whose standard American pronunciation rhymes with “furrow”. Edward Emerson wrote that the name should be pronounced “Thó-row, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable.”in appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called “my most prominent feature.” of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “Thoreau is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty.” Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted manywomen found attractive. However, Louisa may Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau’s facial hair “will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man’s virtue in perpetuity.” Thoreau studied at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science.A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. in fact, the master’s degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates “who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having five dollars to give the college.” his comment was: “let every sheep keep its own skin”, a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written on sheepskin vellum.Civil disobedience and the Walden years: 1845–1849Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home. On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American war and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on “the rights and duties of the individual in relation to Government”explaining his tax resistance at the concord lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26: heard Thoreau’s lecture before the lyceum on the relation of the individual to the state– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar’s expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in concord jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar’s payment of mine whentaken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau’s. —Bronson Alcott, Journals (1938)Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled resistance to civil government (also known as civil disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the aesthetic papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley’s principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819) that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time –and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action. At Walden Pond, he completed a first draft of a week on the concord and Merrimack Rivers, an elegy to his brother, John, that described their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. Thoreau did not find a publisher for this book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense, though fewer than 300 were sold. Thoreau self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson’s own publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book. Its failure put Thoreau into debt that took yearsto pay off, and Emerson’s flawed advice caused a schism between the friends that never entirely healed. In august 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in “Ktaadn,” the first part of The Maine Woods.Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. Over several years, he worked to pay off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript for what, in 1854, he would publish as Walden, or life in the woods, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but today critics regard it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.。
09-Emerson-Thoreau
Transcendentalism（超验主义）Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by American Unitarianism and Puritanism, and foreign factors such as German philosophy，especially Kant’s thoughts, ancient Indian and Chinese thoughts, such as those of Confucius and Mencius,the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each individual find, in Emerson's words, “an original relation to the universe”. Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850's in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery.General Introduction(a special kind of philosophy appeared in the 1830s in US) (quite influential)(1) Resources1. Unitarianism(1) Fatherhood of God(2) Brotherhood of men(3) Leadership of Jesus(4) Salvation by character (perfection of one’s character)(5) Continued progress of mankind(6) Divinity of mankind(7) Depravity of mankind2. Romantic IdealismCenter of the world is spirit, absolute spirit (Kant)3. Oriental mysticismCenter of the world is “oversoul”4. PuritanismAt the end of the 18th century people gradually felt boring about the strict Calvinism. At the same time with the development of science and technology, Americans suspected the old religion. Thus, Unitarianism（唯一理教）appeared. It was a developed school from the Transcendentalism. It stressed "continual progress of mankind" rather than old religion\'s "man\'s total depravity”. It influenced Emerson. Emerson once was a preacher of Unitarianism, but he thought there were too many rituals in this religious school. Then he resigned from the position and sought a way for people to worship more freely.Emerson also believed in individuality and the dream of making a Garden of Eden on earth held by old generation Puritans.From Jonathan Edwards Emerson inherited the ideas of inward communication with God and the divine symbolism of nature.B. Foreign influenceGerman Philosophy, especially Kant（康德）Ancient Indian and Chinese works, such as Confucius and Mencius(2) Features (P57)A. Emphasis on Spirit (Oversoul) (超灵)（爱默生在超验主义里强调的超灵相当于过去宗教里上帝的这个角色，在超验主义里超灵是无形的，人生活的世界里所有的一切都来自超灵，超灵在人生活的世界里也无所不在。
美国文学史名词解释
American Puritanism 美国清教主义Simply speaking, American Puritanism just refers to the spirit and ideal of puritans who settled in the North American continent in the early part of the seventeenth century because of religious persecutions.美国清教主义指的是清教徒的精神和理想的定居在北美大陆十七世纪初期由于内容的宗教迫害。
It migration that laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of New England. 它为新英格兰奠定了宗教，知识和社会秩序的基础。
Puritans adhered to the Five Points of Calvinism as codified at the Synod of Dort: unconditional election, limited atonement, total depravity, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints. 清教徒遵循加尔文派于多特宗教会议上制定的五点信条：无条件拣选，有限救赎，完全堕落，不可抗拒的恩典，以及圣徒的坚守。
It is basis of American literature. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.It contributing to the development of Symbolism: a technique, widely used.它是美国文学的基础。
美国超验主义英语的介绍
Mottos
• ''The world shrank itself into a drop of dew.'' 世界将其自身缩小成为一滴露水
"Believe yourself"
"A person must be able to become what he wants to be "
The major features of Transcendentalists
4.东方神秘主义 【Oriental mysticism】
Weaknesses
The transcendentalist movement had a smafor a few years.
The transcendentalism was never a systematic philosophy. It borrowed from many sources.
“American Scholar”: American’s declaration of intellectual independence.( to develop American’s own culture)
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862
He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
9 美国超验主义
Transcendentalism ( New being with God and nature)
Man and God and Nature
We cannot understand the America of the nineteenth century without coming to terms with Ralph Waldo Emerson
What do they believe?
I become a transparent eyeball;I am nothing;I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God. ---Emerson
•
---Henry D. Thoreau
American Transcendentalism
• 1. The first American intellectual movement to inspire a number of literary classics ( in Europe, it was a philosophy) • 2. It stresses the unity of being---viewing God, man and nature as sharers in a universal soul----Oversoul • 3. It is a kind of idealism and romanticism
Emerson
Thoreau
Fuller
B. Alcott
E. Peabody
Whoபைடு நூலகம்are they?
超验主义
TranscendentalismAbstractA literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserts the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States with Ralph Waldo Emerson as its leader. With the continuous development, Transcendentalism becomes an important ideological liberation movement in the history of American. It stressed the direct communication between God and human and the divinity in human heart. It is also critical. It aims to build a moral and free world, showing the ideal Utopia life. Its spirit is one of important heritages in America history. Transcendentalism is not about doing what is good or bad for the society, but to break away from what society expects and doing what one believes is right for them.Key Words: transcendentalism; individualism; influence; development超验主义摘要超验主义（英文：Transcendentalism，也叫“新英格兰超验主义”或者说“美国文艺复兴”）是美国的一种文学和哲学运动。
美国浪漫主义文学——梭罗
不是梦里 连缀起这诗行； 连缀起这诗行； 就是瓦尔登湖 才使我更接近上帝和天堂。 才使我更接近上帝和天堂。 我是它岸上的圆石 让微风清掠身上； 让微风清掠身上； 它的水， 它的水，它的沙 是我掌心的珍藏； 是我掌心的珍藏； 它那最隐密的泉眼 休憩在我最高的思想。 休憩在我最高的思想。
超验主义追求人的自由的精神，成为美国文 化中一个重要遗产。这种思潮发源于单一神教， 同时又接受了浪漫主义的影响，强调人与上帝 间的直接交流和人性中的神性，其结果是解放 了人性，提高了人的地位，使人的自由成为可 能。超验主义具有强烈的批判精神，其社会目 标是建立一个道德完满、真正民主自由的社会， 尽管带有乌托邦的理想色彩。
朗诵片段 我见过许多个性独特的事物，要数瓦尔登湖最为神奇了。 我见过许多个性独特的事物，要数瓦尔登湖最为神奇了。许多人被形 容成瓦尔登湖，但真正承受得起的没几个。 容成瓦尔登湖，但真正承受得起的没几个。尽管湖畔的树木一片片的被 砍伐，火车也侵入这块领土，尽管爱尔兰人再湖附近盖起了猪棚， 砍伐，火车也侵入这块领土，尽管爱尔兰人再湖附近盖起了猪棚，冰块 商也在湖上采割过冰块，但瓦尔登湖仍然保持着它纯洁的天性。 商也在湖上采割过冰块，但瓦尔登湖仍然保持着它纯洁的天性。它还是 我年青时所见到的那个湖，变化的只是我自己。波痕不断却都转瞬消失， 我年青时所见到的那个湖，变化的只是我自己。波痕不断却都转瞬消失， 湖依然青春亮丽，永远没有一丝皱纹。我矗立在湖边， 湖依然青春亮丽，永远没有一丝皱纹。我矗立在湖边，一只燕子飞快地 掠过湖面，叼起一条小虫，跟以前一样。今夜，它却深深触动了我， 掠过湖面，叼起一条小虫，跟以前一样。今夜，它却深深触动了我，仿 佛以前我并没有与它朝夕相处，为什么呢？因为它是瓦尔登湖！ 佛以前我并没有与它朝夕相处，为什么呢？因为它是瓦尔登湖！
美国文学第5周超验主义
The Summit of American Romanticism
Transcendentalism
• (1) • (2) • (3) • (4)
Definition Features Influences Representatives
Emerson’s Point of View
“the infinitude of man” firmly believes in the transcendence of the “ oversoul ” regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882)
~~went to Europe, and met Coleridge, Carlyle and Wordsworth and made friends with them, and brought back the influence of European Romanticism.
2.regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man ~~Nature as symbolic of God. ~~In the eyes of Emerson, “nature is the vehicle of thought,” and “particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts”. Thus everything bears a secondary and an ulterior隐秘的 sense. A flowing river indicates the ceaseless motion of the universe. The seasons correspond to the life span of man. The ant is the image of man himself, small in body but mighty in heart.
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希望谨慎地生活，只 面对生活的基本事实， 看看我是否学得到生 活要教育我的东西，
and not, when I came to 免得到了临死的时候，
die, discover that I had
才发现我根本就没有
not lived.”
生活过。
பைடு நூலகம்
that evil was nonexistent appeared to be an optimistic folly
Sources
1.欧洲浪漫主义文学 【the romantic literature of Europe】
2.新柏拉图主义 【neo-Platonism】
3.德国理想主义哲学 【German idealistic philosophy】
2. the importance of the individual
3. nature is the symbol of Spirit or God
Creeds
• 1.至善 absolute good • 2.纯洁无暇 unspotted innocence of nature • 3.人具有神性 humanity was godlike and
“American Scholar”: American’s declaration of intellectual independence.( to develop American’s own culture)
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862
He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
a prescient（有先见之明的） critic of the countervailing（对抗性的） pressures of society.
Emerson's work
Nature. It is the Bible of transcendentalists. It contains almost everything Emerson wants to say in the rest of his life. His later works were mostly to illustrate the book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
philosopher, lecturer, essayist, and poet,
leading the Transcendentalist movement
a champion（拥护者） of individualism
The failure of transcendentalism as a moral force in American life was its denial of its real spiritual origin.
爱默生 Ralph Waldo Emerson
梭罗 Henry David Thoreau
It illustrates his desire to be independent and find truth for himself.
excerpt of Walden
• “I went to the woods • 我到林中去，因为我
because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
• Started by a group of people in the Transcendental Club in the 1830s who published their views in the journal The Dial
Brief Introduction
Transcendentalist believed instinct or intuition is the deepest level of man’s soul. They tried to find truth through feeling, rather than through logic. So they write not in a logical way. We can say they formed a movement of feelings & beliefs rather than a system of philosophy.
Mottos
• ''The world shrank itself into a drop of dew.'' 世界将其自身缩小成为一滴露水
"Believe yourself"
"A person must be able to become what he wants to be "
The major features of Transcendentalists
4.东方神秘主义 【Oriental mysticism】
Weaknesses
The transcendentalist movement had a small membership and only lasted for a few years.
The transcendentalism was never a systematic philosophy. It borrowed from many sources.
1. emphasis on Spirit or the Oversoul
---Oversoul is a unitary（统一的） power of goodness， omnipresent（无所不在的） and omnipotent（无所不能的）， from which all things came and of which everyone was a part。
Walden
A) It wasn’t a successful book at the time it was published and has been virtually forgotten until 20th century.
B) It is the careful recording of day-today life at Walden pound and reflection on how one can live simply and truly
American Transcendentalism 美国超验主义
Ralph Waldo Emerson 爱默生
Henry David Thoreau 梭罗
Historical background
• A broad, philosophical movement in New England during the Romantic era（peak：1836-1855） the first American intellectual movement.