Also known as “Transcendentalism”

Early-Mid 19th Century

Evolution to Light Romanticism

(Transcendentalism)

Puritanism

Faith

Authority

Theology

Pre-destiny

Age of Reason

Reason, Logic

Skepticism

Science

Self-Made

Dark RomanticismImagination, Madness, Neg. EmotionIntuition, Mystery, Unknown

Dreams, SupernaturalCurses, Omens, Fate

Light RomanticismSeeks Inspiration, Pos. EmotionIntuition, Nonconformity

Nature (divine)

Self-Reliance

Transcendence

SimplicityConfidencePossibility

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”

- Walt Whitman

What does this look like in

Walden or Self-Reliance?

Divine withinIndividualismSelf, not society

The soul unto itself

Is an imperial friend, -

Or the most agonizing spy

An enemy could send.

- Emily Dickinson

What does this look like in

Walden or Self-Reliance?

PantheismTruth

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

- Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

What does this look like in

Walden or Self-Reliance?

Nature transcendence

Dependence on selfTrue to the divine

The Soul selects her own Society –

Then – shuts the Door –

To her divine Majority –

Present no more –

- Emily Dickinson, The Soul Selects Her Own Society

What does this look like in

Walden or Self-Reliance?

Heroes and WritersMental Stability/ Personal Relationships

Societal Relationships

Spirituality

Talents

Inspiration

Talented or gifted in some way (intelligence, highly creative)

Loner (doesn’t fit in), Misunderstood/doesn’t fit into society (thinks differently e.g. Poe)Spiritual (dark arts, spirits)

dark creativity & imagination not society’s expectations

Conflicted and unstable, depressed

Conflicted with society but stable

Loner by choice, prefers to be Misunderstood (thinks differently e.g. hippies)God surrounds us, simplicity

gifted , intelligence

Light/natural creativity & imagination rather than society expectations

Civil DisobedienceWalden

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Walden

Self-RelianceNature Standing on the bare

ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

- Nature