Transcendentalism: The Theme Of Nature And Nature By William Wordsworth

While both poets Muir and Wordsworth wrote about the happy feelings that they have towards nature the beautiful outdoors or what some people may say Mother Nature, some of which the feelings are the same and some that are different as they speak of the different plants.

“Nature” is an essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and published by James Munroe and Company in 1836. [1] “Nature” has a total of 41 pages. The essay consists of eight parts: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects. Each part takes a different perspective on the relationship between humans and nature. In this essay, Emerson emphasizes the foundation of transcendentalism, “a religious and philosophical movement that developed during the late 1820s and 30s in the Eastern region of the United States as protest against the general state of spirituality and, in particular, the state of intellectualism.” [2] “Transcendentalism suggests that the divine, or God, suffuses nature, and suggests that reality can be understood by studying nature.” [3] “Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston at the early nineteenth century. Transcendentalism evolved as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason.” [4] Emerson divides nature into four stages: commodity, beauty, language, and discipline. These define the ways by which humans use nature for their basic needs. The historical significance of “Nature” was that transcendentalism club led the celebration of the American experiment as one of the individualism and self-reliance. [5]

According to Dictionary.com Transcendentalism is, “any philosophy based upon the doctrine that the principles of reality are to be discovered by the study of the processes of thought, or a philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical”, but that’s only part of what Transcendentalism is. Transcendentalism is standing for One of the first people to write about Transcendentalism were Henry David Thoreau writer of “Resistance to Civil Government” and Ralph Waldo Emerson writer of “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”. Those writers through their writing inspired people like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

Albert Einstein spoke of nature and its value when he said, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” As Einstein pointed out, by looking into nature you could discover something new about yourself and the world around you. John Muir and William Wordsworth both discovered joy when they looked deep into nature. This joy gave them a new perspective on nature and life and they each expressed this joy through different works of writing. Both authors have a unique outlook on nature and its impact as well as different thoughts on how to share their relationships; Muir used diction and connotation to show his relationship in his essay “The Calypso Borealis” where Wordsworth used tone and syntax in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.

Transcendentalism is the American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that was rooted in the pure Romanticism of the English and the German (Goodman). Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the father of Transcendentalism because his literature is the first to praise the notable spirituality of nature. The basic belief of the movement is to live authentically; being true to oneself (Day). The movement itself, in the years 1840-1860, is fertile in knowledge because people are now beginning to ask questions about religion. Questions about religion, at the time, would most likely consist of origin, morality, and rituals. Because of the complex level of

The philosophy of Transcendentalism, according to the article “Transcendentalism, An American Philosophy” is believed to have been created and led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which is why he is considered by many literary scholars and historians to be the father of Transcendentalism. Throughout the years, this philosophy attracted other artists and thinkers such as the American Romantic novelist Henry David Thoreau. These prominent and poetic individuals created an insight for this movement, believing in the true and significant values of individualism, minimalism, and spirituality in their lives. These specific aspects can be found in Thoreau’s most famous work, and Transcendentalist staple, Walden. This novel was a reminiscence of his life

Henry David Thoreau, Jon Krakauer, and Chris McCandless all believe deeply in transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a religious concept that values self-wisdom, the human soul, and nature. All of which Thoreau and McCandless grasp strongly.

In John Muir’s essay “The Calypso Borealis” he shows his love for flowers when he said “it seems so wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has much power over human hearts.” William Wordsworth also shows his love towards nature when he wrote his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” he shows the joy he finds in nature when he said “ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.” Both John Muir and William Wordsworth find happiness and joy in nature, but express it in different way. Muir and Wordsworth had to go through the worst to discover the beauty of nature. Throughout both John Muir and William Wordsworth exciting adventure, they experienced two totally different aspects with nature.

William Wordsworth uses different groups of words in this poem to connect nature with human beings: the pattern of their

Transcendentalism is a belief that all are considered equal and the knowledge of individuals goes beyond them, it is based on intuition/imagination more than logic. Those who believe in this idea are known as Transcendentalists, many of whom were part of this group were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry W. Longfellow, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. There are many components in the Transcendentalism idea, such parts are the discussions of conformity, civil disobedience, education, and God and these themes will be related to myself.

In the early 19th century transcendentalism became a philosophical movement that arose the ideas of understanding life in the simplest of terms. From Thoreau to Emerson, they expressed the ideas of nonconforming from society in order to live in simplicity. Although transcendentalist ideas tend to come and go, society alters the appeal as the influence of transcendentalism occurs in many forms today.

It is also clear that the human heart and mind is deeply touched in the form of spirituality and joy by the beauty of nature. Finally, it is evident that by use of language devices, that writings regarding the natural world truly can fill the reader with a sense of the beauty, and awe of the natural world. Therefore, while both of these writers have deep relationships with nature, Wordsworth has expressed his relationship with nature as being that of a source of happiness using poetic syntax and tones of admiration, while

Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This

The dictionary defines nature not only as “the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities,” but also as “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.” Meaning that nature is any and everything that surrounds us. Nature is the entirety as a whole; the universe, the planets, the stars. To be a human is to be a spiritual person as a human coexisting with your surroundings. To be human is to be a small part something greater — the never ending cycle of life and human experience that creates the foundation of our

Where Wordsworth focused too on love and nature at first, he then took on more spiritual subjects. Further, if we assume that Wordsworth’s imitation of “The Retreat” was intentional, then Vaughan may have even been a poetic model (in some sense) for Wordsworth later in life. True, Wordsworth is not generally considered a religious poet; he would never have originally considered Vaughan a model because of the latter’s extreme religiosity. Yet if these two poems don’t echo in godly gestures per se, they do in a more spiritual sense—and perhaps Wordsworth, as a man confronted with his own mortality, found Vaughan’s treatise on the spirit’s immortality a sympathetic sentiment. Thus by comparing the two, we also might better understand Wordsworth’s poetic progression.