2. It stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. They tell people to depend upon themselves for spiritual perfection. It represented a new way of looking at man. It was against the notion that man is totally depraved, and can not help to be saved except through God. It was also against the process of dehumanization, which came with capitalist development. The industrialization was turning man into non-human, people were losing their individuality, and becoming uniform.
3. It offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God. To them, nature was not pure nature, it was alive. Things in nature tended to become a symbol of spirit. Eg, a flowing river indicates the ceaseless motion of the universe; the seasons correspond to the life span of man. This added to the literary symbolism in American literature.
Famous writers
                            Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
life story
 his father a liberal minister, Before he entered university, his father died. He entered Harvard in 1817, working his way through. After graduation, in order to help his family to pay its debts, he taught school. In 1825, he enrolled in Harvard Divinity School. In 1826, he married a delicate sickly girl. But in 1831, after a short but happy marriage, his wife died. Then he traveled to Europe, made friends with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and brought back the influence of European Romanticism. After he returned, he formed an informal club with other people, helped to found the Transcendentalism journal, the Dial, and became the most eloquent spokesman of New …..
works
Nature
Self-reliant
The American Scholar
Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New….
Themes
1. express his firm belief in the transcendence of the oversoul or spirit. His emphasis on the spirit runs through almost all his writings.
2. regard nature as the purest, and a moral influence on man which cam make people holy. It implies that the world around is symbolic
3. Believe that the individual is the most important of all, and convince people the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite. He is optimistic about human perfectibility.
4. calls for an independent culture in The American Scholar. “Scholar” as used here should not be mistaken for “student” or “researcher”. In Emerson’s phrase, the scholar is “Man Thinking” and that is the central theme of it. As “man thinking”, the scholar should know how to think when confronted with Nature, Past, Action. Emerson particularly warns that the past should be used to inspire and not to enslave scholars. Emerson argued in the speech that the age called to the scholar for active participation and leadership which further emphasizes the importance of the individual. The American Scholar is regarded as “American declaration of the intellectual independence.” He tried to say that American writers should write about here and new instead of imitating and importing other lands, so he embodies a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
life story
His father was an unsuccessful storekeeper and a maker of lead pencil. Encouraged by his mother he entered Harvard. After graduation, he stayed with his family, helping his father to make pencils, running a private school. Later, he made friends with Emerson, his neighbour, and accepted his ideas. In 1845, he built a cabin on Waldon Pond, and moved in on July 4 to live there in a very simple manner for a little over two years. His purpose is to move away from the rush and bustle of American social life, which was to him, getting more and more materialistic-oriented. There on the pond, he tried to be self-reliant. He worked six weeks a year, planting beans and so on, but read and enjoyed the nature most of the time for the rest of the year. When he returned, he wrote about his experience in the famous book, Waldon.
A week on the Concord and Merrimack River  first book. It gives an account of the trip he took there with his brother, and conveyed his viewpoint on nature, life and art.
Civil Disobedience. He advocates passive resistance to unjust laws of society, and it influenced people such as Gandhi.
Waldon
His masterpiece, structured on the four seasons, beginning in summer and ending in spring. It tells of how he worked to produce minimum essentials of food and shelter.
Theme
1. see nature as a healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being, and regarded it as a symbol of spirit. He believed firmly that natural objects and phenomena are the original symbols which express thought and feelings.
2. It is a book on self-culture and human perfectibility. It is a book about man, about what he is and what he should and must be. He holds that the most important thing for man to do is to be self-reliant and strive to achieve spitual perfection. So he has been regarded as a prophet of individualiam in America.
3. He was very critical of modern civilization. In his opinion, it was degrading and enslaving man. He was impatient with his fellowmwn who took great interest in the development of the outside world such as railroad, the telegraph.
4. He was disgusted with the craze for monetary success that came in the wake of mechanization and commercialization of life. In Waldon, he recorded hoe he tried to minimize his own needs on Waldon Pond. He thought spiritual richness is real wealth, and asked people to be “simplicity, simplicity! Simplify, simplify!”
Transcendentalism: an idealist philosophical tendency among writers in and around Boston in the mid-19th C. It grew out of Christian Unitarianism in the 1803s under the influence of German and British Romanticism. The leading Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson issued what was virtually the movement’s manifesto in his essay Nature, which presents natural phenomena as symbol of higher spiritual truths. The individualism of Transcendentalists is expressed in Emerson’s essay “self-reliance” and in Henry Thoreau’s Waldon.
American renaissance, name given to a flourishing of distinctively American literature in the period before the civil war. As described by F.). Mattiessen in his influential critical work American Renaissance, this renaissance is represented by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, H.D Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman. It i.e. regarded as a delayed manifesto of “Romanticism, especially in Emerson’s philosophy of “Transcendentalism.”

Chapter Five
Hawthorn (1804-1604) （霍桑）
A Romanticism writer, born on the fourth of July, 1804. Two of his ancestors were leading figures in the 17th C, and one was notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. Gradually, the family fortune declined. Young Hawthorne took shame upon himself on account of these two ancestors and their misdeeds led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life. So one of the major theme of his works is to expose the dark side of society and human nature. Most of his works deal with evil one way or another.
Works
Twice-Told Tales（重讲一遍的故事 a collection of short stories）
Mosses From an Old Manse （古屋青苔）
The Scarlet Letter （红字）
House of Seven Gables （七个尖角阁的房子）
The Blithdale Romance （福谷传奇）
The Marble Faun （大理石雕像）
Yong Goodman Brown （年轻的小伙子布朗）
The Minister’s Black Veil （教长的黑面纱）
Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter （拉普奇尼博士的女儿）
House: Colonel Pyncheon takes by force the land of Maule and burns him to death. Before he dies, he curses the Colonel, saying, “God will give him blood to drink.” Then his curses really materialize. The young members of the family die out.