Transcendentalist Writers: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman

Posted on May 19, 2024 in English

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalist)

  • Born May 25, 1803
  • On May 12, 1811, Emerson’s father died
  • In 1817 he entered Harvard College
  • He graduated in 1821 and taught school
  • In 1829 he married Ellen Louisa Tucker
  • The 1830s saw Emerson become an independent literary man
  • Emerson reclaimed an idealistic philosophy

Essays:

  • Self-Reliance
  • Nature

Henry David Thoreau (Transcendentalist)

  • Born July 12, 1817, Concord, Massachusetts
  • In 1828 his parents sent him to Concord Academy
  • Emerson settled in Concord during Thoreau’s sophomore year at Harvard
  • Thoreau fell in love with Ellen Sewall in 1840
  • Early in the spring of 1845, Thoreau began to chop down tall pines
  • Walden, a series of 18 essays describing Thoreau’s experiment
  • Thoreau became an activist and abolitionist

Essay:

  • Walden

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Romanticism)

  • Born Feb. 27, 1807
  • Longfellow lived in Portland, Maine
  • Henry was a dreamy boy who loved to read
  • Graduated from Bowdoin College
  • In 1831 he married Mary Storer Potter
  • Frances Appleton refused his proposal
  • Frances Longfellow died in 1861

Poems:

  • A Psalm of Life
  • The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls
  • The Cross of Snow
  • The Children’s Hour

Walt Whitman (Transcendentalism-Realism)

  • Born May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York
  • Walt attended public school in Brooklyn
  • In 1846 he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
  • Leaves of Grass was warmly praised by the poet and essayist
  • Whitman was known primarily for his poems

Poems:

  • I Hear America Singing
  • Song of Myself
  • A Noiseless Patient Spider
  • Beat! Beat! Drums!

Ballad Basics

  • What is a ballad?

    A song-poem that reveals a historic event or person

  • Types of ballads

    • Oral (informal/traditional)
    • Written (formal)

  • What happens when a ballad travels?

    • Changes language
    • Changes pronunciation

  • Topics:

    • Historic events
    • Historic people
    • Typical war/battle won or lost
    • State expansion experiences
    • Love incidents, usually tragic
    • Jobs

  • Typical format

    • Usually quatrains (4 lines)
    • Syllabic count: 8, 6, 8, 6
    • Rhyme scheme: abcb or abab

  • Purpose of a ballad

    • Desire to record or remember a story
    • To spread the story
    • Want a media that travels

  • Why were ballads orally transmitted?

    • People didn’t know how to write properly
    • Low or no literature
    • Low or no access to paper and pencil
    • Low or no time to formally compose

  • What does a ballad enable?

    • Ballad song melodies
    • Poem-like formats
    • Rhyme line length from years of listening
    • Catalogue of typical storylines
    • Media that travels/moves

  • What makes ballads easy to compose?

    • The event or topic of the ballad was well known
    • Was a typical narrative story
    • The melody