小妇人的超验主义思想毕业论文(编辑修改稿)

小妇人的超验主义思想毕业论文(编辑修改稿)内容摘要：

st, and a mutual faith in the unbounded potential of American democratic life. Located in the Concord, Massachusetts, area in the years between 1835 and 1860, the transcendentalists formed not a tight group but, rather, a loose federation. Though a movement such as transcendentalism cannot be said to have had one distinct leader, Emerson was clearly its central figure. The publication of his Nature in 1836 is generally considered to mark the beginning of an identifiable movement. The next two decades were to see numerous new works from Emerson and poems, essays, and books from other transcendentalist figures, such as Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Bronson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Gee Ripley, and 内江师范学院本科毕业论文 9 Theodore Parker. Never forming an official affiliation, these figures and others associated with them banded together for the formation of an informal discussion group called the Transcendental Club。 the publication of the transcendentalist literary and philosophical journal, The Dial and the establishment of an experiment in utopian munal living, Brook Farm. One thing almost all those associated with the movement did share, however, was a mon heritage of Unitarianism. Perhaps more than anything else, this fact helps to explain the development of transcendentalism and its later and larger significance for American culture. The transcendentalists broke with Unitarianism for two reasons. First, they objected to the Unitarian desire to cling to certain particulars of Christian history and dogma. Emerson called this clinging a noxious exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual, and he asked instead for a direct access to God, unmediated by any elements of Scripture and tradition. And second, the transcendentalists lamented the sterility of belief and practice they found in the Unitarian faith. According to Thoreau, it is not man39。 s sin but his boredom and weariness that are as old as Adam. The American Adam needs to exchange his bondage to tradition for a freedom to experiment: old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. In some ways transcendentalism attempted to recapture for the American spirit the fervor of the original Puritan enterprise. That zeal, with its attendant bliss and agony, had been suppressed or exiled to the wilderness of the American religious experience by the end of the eighteenth century. Transcendentalism was one of the first and most dramatic protests against civil religion in America. Though it did not live up to the expectations of its adherents, many of them expected nothing less than a total regeneration of social and spiritual life through the application of the principles of idealism in America, transcendentalism has had a lasting impact. In the years immediately preceding the American Civil War, several of the transcendentalists were important participants in the abolitionist movement, and in the decades to follow, widely divergent individuals and movements would find inspiration in the transcendental protest against society. 内江师范学院本科毕业论文 10 For example, Henry Ford, who once said that history is bunk and declared Emerson39。 s essays to be his favorite reading, dwelt upon the transcendentalists39。 disdain for convention and their exaltation of self reliant power, while both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King drew deeply upon the resources of Thoreau39。 s famous essay, Civil Disobedience. Perhaps even more significantly, transcendentalism marked the first substantial attempt in American history to retain the spiritual experience and potential of the Christian faith without any of the substance of its belief. By claiming an essential innocence for man, by substituting a direct intuition of God or truth for any form of revelation, and by foreseeing a future of ill defined but certain glory for humankind, transcendentalism paved the way for the many romantic notions about human nature and destiny that have bee such a central part of the American experience in the last hundred years Ⅱ .Transcendentalism in Little Women A. A Brief Look at the Plot of the Little Women Alcott begins Little Women by invoking John Bunyan‟s 17th century text The Pilgrim’s Progress. Alcott‟s except sets the stage for the tone and theme of the events to e in her novel. In fact, the first chapter of Little Women is entitled Playing Pilgrim. It is no coincidence that Alcott would choose The Pilgrim39。 s Progress as the work which would influence the minds of the four March daughters. Little Women is partly autobiographical, since Alcott herself grew up in a family of four girls. Moreover, Alcott39。 s father was friends with both Emerson and Thoreau, which undoubtedly impacted young Louisa May. Her exposure to such works as The Pilgrim39。 s Progress was a result of her upbringing, close to the heart of New England transcendentalism and to the values it espoused. In their oldfashioned New England home the little women lived with Mrs. March, their brisk and cheery mother, who always had a canIhelpyou look about her, and whom her four girls lovingly called Maumee. Father March was an army chaplain in the Civil War, and in his absence Jo declared herself to be the man of the family. To add to their slender ine, she went every day to read to Aunt March, a peppery old lady。 and Meg, too, earned a small 内江师范学院本科毕业论文 11 salary as daily nursery governess to neighbor39。 s children. In the big house next door to the Marches lived a rich old gentleman, Mr. Laurence, and his grandson, a jolly, chummy boy called Laurie. Though aweinspiring at first, Mr. Laurence proved both kindly and generous, and even timid Beth mustered up courage to go over to the Palace Beautiful at twilight and play softly on the grand piano there. But, as she confessed to her mother, when she began she was so frightene。